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■ 

PMSBYTERIANISM 



THBEE HUNDKED YEAKS AGO. 



Bev. wm. p. breed, d.d. 



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PHILADELPHIA: 
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

No. 1334 Chestnut Street. 

) ?73- 






^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington. 




Westoott & Thomson, 
Stereolypers and Electroiypers, Philada. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

PAGB 

PRESBYTERIANISM THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO... 5 



II. 
THE FIELD 27 



III. 
THE CHAMPIONS 140 



IV. 
THE CONFLICT .*. 184 



V. 
CONCLUSION 233 



INTRODUCTION. 



ECCLESIASTICAL history is the record 
" of the outworking of God's decree for 
the world's renovation. It is the compli- 
cated story of the progress of the truth, its 
assaults upon error, the resistance of error 
to these assaults, and the results, in the life 
and experience of men and nations, of these 
onsets and oppositions — results many of 
them cheering and glorious, some of them 
fearful and bloody. Full of food for the 
head and the heart is such a story ! 

It was a wise charge, therefore, of the 
Presbyterian General Assembly of 1871, 
that its synods, presbyteries and congrega- 
tions should take advantage of the advent 
of the year 1872 to refresh their own and 
the people's minds with the memories that 
come down to us from the year 1572, to 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

meditate upon the furious conflicts that then 
were raging, to gaze again upon the grand, 
heroic and devoted champions that then led 
the hosts of Israel, and to contrast the sweet 
quietude of our own times with the turmoil 
and woes, the defeats and triumphs, of our 
brethren three hundred years ago. Having 
prepared and preached a discourse upon this 
subject, the writer was allured by the attrac- 
tions of the theme and its obvious instruct- 
iveness to enlarge the manuscript into a 
small volume. There is here no pretence 
to original research, but simply a presenta- 
tion of the results of an effort to gather and 
group in a brief compact form those facts 
which lie scattered through many volumes 
on our bookshelves. 

The plan of the book embraces the fol- 
lowing points : 

1. A statement of the fact, together with 
confirmatory proof of the fact, that three 
hundred years ago the Protestant world was 
almost exclusively a Presbyterian world. 

2. A rapid survey of this Presbyterian- 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

ism in its progress from the rise of the Eef- 
ormation, and a glance at the aspect of the 
field three hundred years ago. 

3. A glance also at the chief champions, 
on both sides, who figured in the conflict. 

4. A narrative of some of the incidents 
in the great conflict of those memorable 
times. 

We trust that the perusal of these pages 
may help to beget some additional interest 
in our Church system and history, at least 
in the minds and hearts of our younger 
Presbyterians. 

Philadelphia, May, 1872. 



PRESBYTERIANISM, 



DRESBYTEKIANISM, strictly speaking, 
• is a system of Church government, and 
is by no means necessarily allied to any one 
system of doctrine. History indeed shows 
it so steadily inclining toward, and so gener- 
ally associated with, a certain well-known 
body of religious doctrine as to suggest prob- 
able affinities between them. Indeed, civil 
governments vary in form very largely as 
they vary in those fundamental doctrines 
respecting the natural prerogatives of man- 
hood that severally underlie them. The 
general prevalence of the belief that man is 
made in the image of his God, and is en- 
dowed by his Creator with certain inalienable 
rights, is very apt to shape the civil govern- 
ment after some one of the various forms 
of Republicanism, while the doctrine of the 



10 PBESBYTEBIANISM 

divine right of kings will tolerate no other 
form of government than that of a hereditary 
despotism. Likewise, the system of doc- 
trine that looks upon Adam in Eden as the 
legally constituted federal head and repre- 
sentative of the race, and the Son of God 
as, in like manner, the Head and Represen- 
tative of all the finally saved, and that 
regards those finally saved as drawn to sal- 
vation through the execution of an eternal, 
divine decree, is perhaps, as suggested by 
Mr. Barnes in his essay on " The Affinities 
of Presbyterianism," more likely to associ- 
ate itself with a system of ecclesiastical 
courts, with bodies for legislation and gov- 
ernmental control, than with the less com- 
pact system of councils for mere consulta- 
tion and advice. 

As a matter of history and fact, " the Pres- 
byterian mode of government does not com- 
bine with Arminianism, with Sabellianism, 
with Pelagianism, with Socinianism; and 
if such a union occurs at any time, it is only 
a temporary and manifestly a forced con- 



THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 11 

nection. There are no permanent Armin- 
ian, Pelagian, Soeinian presbyteries, synods, 
general assemblies on earth. There are no 
permanent instances where these forms of 
belief or unbelief take on the presbyterial 
form. There are no Presbyterian forms 
of ecclesiastical administration where they 
would be long retained."* 

Still, it is none the less true that Presby- 
terianism, strictly speaking, is a system of 
Church government. It is government by 
an eldership. The eldership is its essential 
and radical idea. And it is of Presbyte- 
rianism as a form of Church government 
that we now write. 

A Presbyterian church is a church gov- 
erned by a presbytery. A presbytery con- 
sists of a body of presbyters. A presbyter 
is an elder. Hence any church under the 
governmental oversight and control of a 
body of elders is a Presbyterian church. 

These elders are of two classes, those who, 
while ruling, labor also in word and doc- 

* Eev. Albert Barnes. 



12 PBESBYTEBIANISM 

trine, and those who rule, but labor not in 
word and doctrine. 1 Tim. v. 17. There are 
preaching elders and non-preaching elders. 
The preaching elders (or presbyters) stand 
all officially on a footing of perfect equality. 
The same is true of the non-preaching elders 
among themselves. In the governing as- 
semblies all the elders, preaching and non- 
preaching, are officially equal. The vote 
of any one of them is of equal weight with 
the vote of any other. 

In a thoroughly-organized Presbyterian 
church a certain number of non-preaching 
elders, elected by the people, together with 
the preaching elder, also elected by the peo- 
ple, govern a single congregation ; a larger 
number of elders govern a cluster of con- 
gregations, and a larger number still, repre- 
senting the whole Church, govern all below 
them. 

" The radical principles of Presbyterian 
Church government and discipline are : That 
the several congregations of believers, taken 
collectively, constitute one Church of Christ, 



THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 13 

emphatically called the Church ; that a 
larger part of the Church, or a representation 
of it, should govern a smaller or determine 
matters of controversy which arise therein ; 
that in like manner a representation of the 
whole should govern and determine in regard 
to every part and to all the parts united — 
that is, that a majority shall govern, and 
consequently that appeals may be carried 
from lower to higher judicatories till they 
be finally decided by the collected wisdom 
and united voice of the whole Church." 

Thus in a Presbyterian church " the peo- 
ple have a right to a substantive part in its 
government; presbyters who minister in 
word and doctrine are the highest perma- 
nent officers of the Church and all belong to 
the same order, and the outward and visible 
Church is or should be one in the sense that 
a smaller part is subject to a larger and a 
larger to the whole." This is Presbyte- 



PRESBYTERIANISM THREE HUNDRED YEARS 
AGO. 

rilHREE hundred years ago the Protestant 
A world was almost exclusively a Presby- 
terian world. The early Reformers, as is 
well known to all familiar with the history 
of their times, when they put off the tyr- 
anny of Borne, adopted, almost with one 
consent, the fundamental principles of Pres- 
byterianism — namely, official equality among 
the clergy and government by presbyterial 
bodies. To this the Church of England, 
that owes its origin to Henry VIII. , was 
almost the sole exception. 

1. For antiquity, for purity of doctrine, 
and for fidelity in keeping and for zeal in 
propagating the faith once delivered to the 
saints, the Church of the Waldenses stands 
in the very front rank. And this Church 
was a Presbyterian Church. 



16 rRESBYTERlANISM 

"As early as the sixteenth century," 
writes Dr. Smythe, with abundant learning 
and a profuse array of quotations from 
various authorities, " the Waldensian polity 
was precisely what it is now. Every church 
had its consistory, every consistory and pas- 
tor was subject to the synod, and it was com- 
posed of all the pastors, with elders. Over 
this synod one of the ministers was chosen 
by his brethren, and without any second 
ordination presided. This presiding minis- 
ter was called then, as he is called now, 
moderator. He was required, in accord- 
ance with the plan of the early Scottish 
Church, to visit different parishes, and to 
ordain only in conjunction with other min- 
isters. But he was in all things responsible 
to the synod by which he had been ap- 
pointed to office." 

Milner (vol. ii., chap, iii.) quotes the fol- 
lowing from a book concerning the Walden- 
sian pastors : " The pastors meet once every 
year to settle our affairs in a general synod. 
The money given us by the people is car- 



THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 17 

ried to the said general synod, and is there 
received by the elders." 

2. As to the mother of the Eeformed 
Churches, at Geneva, Mosheim writes : " Cal- 
vin introduced into the republic of Geneva, 
and endeavored to introduce into all the 
Eeformed Churches throughout Europe, 
that form of ecclesiastical government which 
is called Presbyterian, from its admitting 
neither the institution of bishops nor of 
any subordination among the clergy. He 
established at Geneva a consistory composed 
of ruling elders, partly pastors and partly 
laymen, and invested this ecclesiastical body 
with a high degree of authority. He also 
convened synods composed of ruling elders 
of different churches, and in these had laws 
enacted for the regulation of all matters of 
a religious nature." 

3. Not one whit behind any Church of 
the Reformation in the thoroughness of its 
Presbyterianism was the Church of France. 
In the Confession of Faith drawn up in 
Paris in 1559, we read : 



18 PRESBYTERIANISM 

" Article xxix. We believe that this true 
Church ought to be governed by that dis- 
cipline which our Lord Jesus hath estab- 
lished, so that there should be in the Church 
pastors, elders and deacons, that the pure 
doctrine may have its course and vices may 
be reformed and suppressed. 

"Article xxx. We believe that all true 
pastors, in whatever places they may be dis- 
posed, have all the same authority and equal 
power among themselves under Jesus Christ, 
the only Head, the only Sovereign and only 
universal Bishoj}." 

As to the type of Presbyterianism that 
obtained in France, Dr. Hodge, in his Consti- 
tutional History of the Presbyterian Church 
in the United States, writes : " It is a great 
mistake to suppose that French Presbyte- 
rianism was more mild than that of Scotland. 
There are many acts of her synods which 
would make modern ears tingle, and which 
prove that American Presbyterianism in its 
strictest forms was a sucking dove compared 
to that of the immediate descendants of the 



THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 19 

Keformers." Some idea of the kind of 
Presbyterianism which prevailed in France 
may be gathered from the fact that the pro- 
vincial synods were obliged to furnish their 
deputies to the national synod with a com- 
mission in these terms : 

" We promise before God to submit our- 
selves unto all that shall be concluded and 
determined in your holy assembly, to obey 
and execute it to the utmost of our power, 
being persuaded that God will preside among 
you and lead you by his Holy Spirit into all 
truth and equity by the rule of his word, 
for the good and edification of his Church, 
to the glory of his great name, which we 
humbly beg of his divine Majesty in our 
daily prayers." 

4. The Church of Holland was twin sister 
in doctrine and discipline with the Church 
of France. 

" The Reformation," writes Motley, " en- 
tered Holland through the ' Huguenot Gate.' 
It may safely be asserted," he adds, "that 
the early Reformers of the provinces were 



20 PRESBYTERIAMSM 

mainly Huguenots in their belief." How 
safely this may be asserted is seen in the 
fact that " when the deputies from the Dutch 
churches appeared in the national synod 
(of France) held in 1583, and tendered the 
Confession of Faith and body of church 
discipline owned and embraced by the said 
churches of the Low Countries, this assem- 
bly, having humbly and heartily blessed 
God for that secret union and agreement, 
both in doctrine and discipline, between the 
churches of this kingdom and that repub- 
lic, did judge meet to subscribe them both ; 
and it did also request those, our brethren, 
their deputies, reciprocally to subscribe our 
Confession of Faith and body of church 
discipline, which in obedience to the com- 
mission given them by their principals they 
did accordingly, thereby testifying mutual 
harmony and concord in doctrine and disci- 
pline of all the churches in both nations."* 
5. In the Lutheran Church, also, we find 
the fundamental principles of Presbyterian- 

* Hodge's " Constitutional History." 



THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 21 

ism. The Bev. Dr. S. S. Schmucker quotes 
of the early Lutheran emigrants to Amer- 
ica : " They at once adopted the form which 
Luther and the Lutheran divines generally 
have always regarded as the primitive one — 
viz., the parity of ministers, the co-opera- 
tion of the laity in church government and 
the free voluntary convention of synods." 

" The doctrine of Presbytery as opposed to 
Prelacy," writes Dr. Wm. Cunningham in 
his Historical Theology, " was not only held, 
as we have seen, by Luther and his asso- 
ciates, but was distinctly declared in the 
Articles of Schmalkalden, which is one of the 
symbolical books of the Lutheran Church. 
There it is set forth that all the functions of 
church government belong equally of right 
to all who preside over churches, whether 
called pastors, presbyters or bishops; and 
this general principle is expressly applied 
to ordination, as proving that ordination by 
ordinary pastors is valid." 

As to the superintendents in some of the 
Lutheran churches, " this institution affords 



22 PRESE YTXRIAXISJI 

no testimony in favor of proper prelacy. 
These superintendents are not regarded as 
holding a distinct higher office, superior to 
that of presbyters, and investing them 
simply as holding that office with jurisdic- 
tion over ordinary pastors, but merely as 
j)resbyters raised by the common consent of 
their brethren to a certain very limited con- 
trol for the sake of order. This institution 
is no proof that the Lutheran Church hold 
the doctrine of prelacy, but merely that 
they hold the lawfulness of a certain 
limited pre-eminence or superiority being 
conferred by presbyters upon one of them- 
selves." 

Even the ecclesiastical government in 
Denmark, Sweden and Norway shows " but 
a slight deviation from the general uniform- 
ity of the Reformed Churches as a whole ; 
and, besides, the Protestant bishops set up in 
these countries at the Reformation were not 
the regular successors of men who had been 
consecrated to the episcopal office, but de- 
rived their ordination and authority from 



THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 23 

Luther and the presbyters who were asso- 
ciated with him." 

6. That in England the great body of the 
early Reformers who refused submission to 
the exactions of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth 
were Presbyterians in principle is abun- 
dantly evident. 

It is perhaps a common impression that 
the term Puritan, as applied to the early 
English dissenters, was in the ecclesiastical 
view generally synonymous with the term 
Independent. This is very wide of the 
truth. Mingled with the English Reform- 
ers was a large number of Independents who 
did good service in the fight for liberty of 
worship, but they were far outnumbered by 
the Presbyterians. 

As for Wickliffe, the morning star of the 
Reformation, he was for "rejecting all hu- 
man rites, and with regard to the identity 
of the order of bishops and priests in the 
apostolic age he was very positive." On 
the essential points of Presbyterianism the 
opinion of distinguished clergymen in the 



24 PRESBYTERIANISM 

early Church of England is very significant. 
Even Cranmer proposed the erection of 
courts similar to the kirk sessions and pro- 
vincial synods afterward introduced into 
the Church of Scotland and universal among 
the Presbyterians of the Continent. 

When, in 1588, Bancroft, chaplain to the 
archbishop, in a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, 
broached the novelty " that the bishops of 
England were a distinct order from the 
priests, and had superiority over them by 
divine right and directly from God," Whit- 
gift, the learned and zealous prelatist, said 
that " he rather wished than believed it to 
be true." 

Dr. John Reynolds, regarded at that time 
as the most learned man in the Church of 
England, in an answer to this sermon of 
Bancroft, wrote : 

" All who have for five hundred years last 
'past endeavored the reformation of the Church 
have taught that all pastors, whether they be 
called bishops or priests, are invested with 
equal authority and power, as first the Wal- 



THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 25 

denses, next Marsilius Patavianus, then 
WicklifTe and his scholars, afterward Huss 
and the Hussites, and last of all Luther, 
Calvin, Brentius, Bullinger and Musculus. 
Among ourselves we have bishops, the 
queen's professors of divinity in our univer- 
sities and other learned men consenting 
therein, as Bradford, Lambert, Jewel, Pil- 
kington, etc. But why do I speak of par- 
ticular persons? It is the common judg- 
ment of the Reformed churches of Helvetia, 
Savoy, France, Scotland, Germany, Hun- 
gary, Poland, the Low Countries and our 
own." 

The "Discipline of the Church as de- 
scribed in the word of God," drawn up by 
Travers and printed at Geneva, 1574, which 
is thoroughly Presbyterian, was afterward 
subscribed by more than five hundred bene- 
ficed clergymen in England as agreeable to 
the word of God and to be promoted by all 
lawful means. Neal writes that under the 
reigns of Elizabeth and James I. the Puri- 
tans were for the most part Presbyterians, 



26 P&ESB YTERIANISM. 

and at the restoration of Charles II. he 
says that the Presbyterians were in posses- 
sion of the whole power of England; the 
council of state, the chief officers of the 
army and navy and the governors of the 
chief forts and garrisons were theirs. Their 
clergy were in possession of both universi- 
ties and of the best livings in the king- 
dom. 

7. Of the Presbyterianism of Scotland, 
shaped under the eye and largely by the 
hand of Knox, we need not speak. 

Thus, at the Reformation, the Church by 
almost unanimous consent flew back, as a 
child escaped from the wilderness to its 
mother's bosom, to Presbyterianism, and 
three hundred years ago the Protestant 
world was almost exclusively a Presbyte- 
rian world. 



II. 

THE FIELD. 

T ET us now take a rapid survey of Pres- 
byterianism in its progress from the rise 
of the Reformation, and in its actual con- 
dition as to organizatior 
of its adherents in 1572. 



dition as to organization and the number 



PIEDMONT. 

In seeking for Presbyterianism in 1572, 
it seems strange that we should have to 
spend a thought on Rome-ridden Italy. 
And yet it is to Italy we betake ourselves 
in quest of the oldest body of Presbyte- 
rians in the wide world ! 

In the extreme north-west of that sunny 
land, separating Italy from France, there 
rises a pile of mountain barriers whose 
snowy peaks look down upon the clouds. 
This mountain mass forms the western side 
of an almost triangular patch of territory, 

27 



28 rBESB YTERIANISM. 

hemmed in by mountains on the north and 
mountains on the south, and sloping down 
and narrowing as it falls toward the sunny- 
plains of Piedmont upon the east. This 
area is ridged with rough, angular, precipi- 
tous mountains, ploughed with deep, steep- 
sided, secluded glens, with easier slopes here 
and there that afford precarious herbage for 
the chamois and sustenance more meagre 
and precarious for man. 

Sweeping down from the north-west to 
the south-east is one deep valley, called Pra- 
gela in part of its extent and farther on 
Perouse. South of this, and opening into 
it just where the Pragela ends and the 
Perouse begins, is the valley of St. Martin. 
On the southern side of the triangle, and 
running almost directly eastward, is the val- 
ley of Luserne, and opening into it from 
the north the valley of Angrogna, and 
from the south another deep secluded val- 
ley, that of Eosa. 

Through these valleys, rugged with rocky 
fragments that have plunged down their 



PIEDMONT. 29 

steep sides from the awful overhanging 
cliffs, rush impetuous mountain torrents 
which sometimes overflow their banks and 
with resistless fury sweep away cattle, peo- 
ple and houses. All along their sides deep * 
clefts in the mountains discharge into them 
their contributions of melted snows in foam- 
ing streams. Here and there at a dizzy 
height juts out a stupendous mountain crag 
which flings a huge shadow on the valley 
below. The land abounds in chasms, grot- 
toes and caves. In the great crag of Caste- 
luzzo, in the valley of Luserne, there is a 
vast natural grotto, scooped out and cleared 
till it is capable of containing upward of 
three hundred persons. Through the clefts 
of the rock sufficient light makes its way 
and an approaching foe may be observed. 
The entrance to it is by a tunnel just large 
enough to admit one person at a time. 
Here and there the valley narrows into a 
mere gorge along whose sides a path affords 
precarious footing for the traveler, while 
over his head projecting cliffs threaten de- 



30 rn ESB YTERIANISM. 

struction. In many portions of this wild 
country the pastor wears clogs under his 
shoes, the soles and heels of which are 
studded with spikes more than an inch long, 
to make it tolerably safe to move about in 
winter among the people of his flock. Far 
up the valley of Angrogna is the Pra del 
Tor, the "Meadow of the Tower," the 
ancient seat of a Waldensian theological 
school. It is a narrow defile hemmed in 
by steep and inaccessible rocks which form a 
sublime natural circumvallation of the spot. 
The eyrie of the eagle is hardly more secure 
from hostile intrusion. 

Interspersed amid all this ruggedness are 
spots of comparative fertility, yet in the 
deeper recesses the harvest is meagre and 
sometimes the unreaped fields are swept to 
desolation by furious avalanches. Farther 
down toward the plain the lands are richer 
and more productive. 

Now, all this rugged land, from its lower, 
sunnier slopes to its deepest, darkest caverns, 
its awful mountain gorges, its dizzy terraces, 



PIEDMONT. 31 

its every foot is hallowed ground ! No deep 
recess but has echoed now with the preach- 
er's impassioned voice, the sounds of prayer 
and praise, and now with the wail of woe. 
Everywhere its soil has been pressed and 
its soilless rocks worn by the knees of the 
suppliant pleading in Jesus' dear name. 
Yes, and wild shrieks of martyred men, 
women and children have drowned the 
sounds of avalanche and mountain torrent 
there, and those turbid glacier streams have 
again and again been crimsoned with mar- 
tyrs' blood ! 

In days far back almost as the times of 
the apostles, out from their quiet homes on 
the sunny plains below, up into those deep, 
cold, dark recesses, the poor persecuted 
saints were driven, bearing with them the 
form and institutions of the faith delivered 
to the saints by Christ and the apostles. 

So early as 1520, Romish historians rep- 
resent the dwellers in these valleys as form- 
ing the most ancient of heretical sects. One 
of their own historians, writing near the 



32 rRESBYTERIANISM. 

close of the seventeenth century, says, " The 
Waldenses are descended from those refu- 
gees who, after St. Paul had there preached 
the gospel, abandoned their beautiful coun- 
try and fled, like the woman mentioned in 
the Apocalypse, to these wild mountains, 
where they have to this day handed down 
the gospel from father to son in the same 
purity and simplicity as it was preached by 
St. Paul." And right pertinent is the ques- 
tion, "Is it wonderful if the glare of the 
fires at Rome, where Christians were bound 
to stakes, covered with pitch and burnt in 
the evenings to illuminate the city, should 
induce those yet at liberty to betake them- 
selves for shelter to the almost inaccessible 
valleys of the Alps and to the clefts of the 
rocks, trusting to that God in whose hands 
are the deep places of the earth, and con- 
sidering that the strength of the hills is his 
also?" 

To the Reformer (Ecolampadius and others 
the Waldenses in 1530 wrote : " That you 
may at once understand the matter, we are 



PIEDMONT. 33 

a sort of teachers of a certain necessitous 
and small people, who already, for more 
than four hundred years — nay, as those of 
our country frequently relate, from the times 
of the apostles — have sojourned among the 
most cruel thorns, yet, as all the pious have 
easily judged, not without great favor of 
Christ." 

Hence, welcoming the name evangelical, 
they indignantly refuse the name " Protes- 
tant" in the modern sense of the word. 
For having never submitted to the impos- 
tures of Rome, they were never called upon 
to reject them. 

The story of their sorrows at one time 
thrilled all Europe and drew from Mil- 
ton's sublime pen the noted adjuration : 

" Avenge, O Lord ! thy slaughtered saints whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; 
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones — 
Forget not, in thy book record their groans 
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled 
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
3 



34 PRESBYTERIANISM. 

To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 
O'er all the Italian fields where still doth sway 
The triple tyrant, that from these may grow 
A hundredfold who, having learned thy way, 
Early may fly the Babylonian woe." 

In that northern valley of Pragela on 
Christmas day, 1400, a furious onset was 
made upon the faithful by the devotees of 
the pope. Many were slain ; and as the 
snow was deep, the escaping fugitives per- 
ished by the way, and on the following 
morning some eighty infants were found 
dead beside their dying mothers. 

In 1500 the valley of Luserne was made 
to run with Vaudois blood. Very many of 
the persecuted people died in prison, whilst 
some were burned alive. 

Near La Tour, at the junction of the val- 
leys of Angrogna and Luserne, deeds were 
done that shame the human name. Houses 
and churches were burned to the ground ; 
infants were torn from their mothers' breasts 
and dashed against the rocks ; the sick were 
either burned alive, cut in pieces or rolled 
down precipices with their head and feet tied 



PIEDMONT. 35 

together; many had gunpowder crammed 
into the mouth and exploded ; multitudes 
were mutilated in various ways — nose, fingers 
and toes cut off — and then turned out to per- 
ish in the snow. Other deeds were done too 
shameless to record. 

How piteously and piously did they plead 
for relief from the horrors of persecution, 
and yet with what firm fidelity to the truth ! 
Ten or twelve years before 1572 they ad- 
dressed a petition to Philibert Emmanuel, 
duke of Savoy and prince of Piedmont, in 
which they say : 

" We do protest before the almighty and 
all-just God, before whose tribunal we must 
all one day appear, that we intend to live 
and die in the holy faith, piety and religion 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that we do 
abhor all heresies that have been and are 
condemned by the word of God. 

" We do embrace the most holy doctrines 
of the prophets and apostles, as likewise of 
the Nicene and Athanasian creeds ; we sub- 
scribe to the four councils and to all the 



36 PRESB YTERLA NESM. 

ancient Fathers in all such things as are not 
repugnant to the analogy of faith. 

"The Turks, Jews, Saracens and other 
nations, though never so barbarous, are suf- 
fered to enjoy their own religion, and w T e 
who serve and worship in faith the true and 
almighty God and one true and only Sove- 
reign, the Lord Jesus, and confess one God 
and one baptism, shall not we be suffered to 
enjoy the same privileges? 

"We humbly implore your Highness' 
goodness, and that for our only Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ's sake, to allow unto 
us, your most humble subjects, the most 
holy gospel of the Lord our God in its 
purity, and that we may not be forced to do 
things against our consciences." 

The Church polity of this people, as has 
already been shown, is now and has been as 
far back as memory reaches, in all essential 
points, Presbyterian. 

" They have in each congregation a con- 
sistory equivalent to the church session. 
The consistory is composed of the pastor, 



PIEDMONT. 37 

the elders and the deacons. The deacons 
have the care of the poor. The elders are 
first nominated by the congregation and 
then elected by the consistory. They are 
regularly installed after sermon in the 
church, and have a charge to watch over 
the spiritual interests of the nock, to aid the 
pastor, to reprove the erring, to exhort to 
the. performance of duty, and two of them 
are appointed to represent the congrega- 
tion in the higher ecclesiastical tribunal. 
The Waldenses believe in the parity of the 
ministry, their pastors, or harbas, being all 
equal. They have ecclesiastical supervision 
by a court of review and control. They 
have but one superior ecclesiastical court — 
viz., the synod— which includes the func- 
tions of both presbytery and synod. The 
synod is composed of all the ministers who 
are actual pastors or professors in their col- 
leges, and of two elders from each parish, 
who, however, have but one vote. The synod 
elect one of their ministers as moderator, 
whose office continues till the time of the 



38 PTxFSB YTEMANISM. 

next meeting. His office gives liim no 
power beyond that of any presiding officer, 
and it expires with the appointment of his 
successor. The ceremony of ordination with 
them is precisely similar to the correspond- 
ing rite as it is practiced in the Presbyterian 
Church of the United States." 

In 1572 we find this people, for so many 
centuries the bush burning in the fires of 
persecution, yet unconsumed, still nestling 
in their mountain recesses, with the snow- 
peaked heights towering above them, the 
crash of the avalanche and the hiss and roar 
of the glacier torrents ever in their ears, 
and a wicked, wily and remorseless foe ever 
ready to spring with tiger ferocity upon 
them. Of their actual numbers three hun- 
dred years ago it is impossible to speak with 
certainty. That, however, they formed a 
pretty numerous body is evident from the 
numbers which were constantly given of 
the slaughtered and imj)risoned in the 
various persecuting onslaughts made upon 
them. 



SWITZERLAND. 39 

SWITZERLAND. 

Crossing the mountain barriers that en- 
compass the sighing valleys and gorges of 
the Waldenses, we find ourselves in Swit- 
zerland. 

" The history of the Swiss Eeformation," 
writes D'Aubigne, "is divided into three 
periods in which the light of the gospel is 
seen spreading successively over three dif- 
ferent zones. From 1519 to 1526, Zurich 
was the centre of the Eeformation, which 
was then entirely German, and was propa- 
gated in the eastern and northern parts 
of the Confederation. Between 1526 and 
1532 the movement was communicated from 
Berne, which is at once German and French, 
and extended to the centre of Switzerland, 
from the gorges of the Jura to the deepest 
valleys of the Alps. In 1532, Geneva be- 
came the focus of light, and the Eeforma- 
tion, which was here essentially French, was 
established on the Leman Lake and gained 
strength in every quarter." 

For centuries Switzerland was the strong- 



40 PKESB YTEBIANISM. 

hold of the papacy ; it is to become one 
mountain-girt fortification of a purified 
Christianity. Mont Blanc rises not more 
grandly from Chamouny than is Swiss 
Presbyterianism to rise before the eyes of 
Europe. 

When the sounds from the gospel trum- 
pet began to reverberate among the moun- 
tains of Switzerland, the world wondered at 
the host of champions that at once re- 
sponded to the summons. 

Fakel came — the almost rashly intrepid 
Farel, the man who, encountering a Romish 
procession in honor of St. Anthony, felt his 
spirit so stirred within him that he seized 
the image of the saint and threw it into the 
river ! Journeying from Strasburg to Swit- 
zerland in company with a single friend, 
night closed around them, the rain fell in 
torrents, and the travelers, in despair of 
finding their road, had sat down midway, 
drenched with rain. "Ah!" said Farel, 
" God, by showing me my helplessness in 
these little things, has willed to teach me 



SWITZERLAND.- 41 

what I am in the greatest, without Jesus 
Christ." At last, springing up, he plunged 
into the marshes, waded through the waters, 
crossed vineyards, fields, hills, forests and 
valleys, and at length reached his destina- 
tion. 

"Let us scatter the seed everywhere," 
writes this evangelical Jehu, " and let civil- 
ized France, provoked to jealousy by this 
barbarous nation, embrace piety at last. Let 
there not be in Christ's body either fingers 
or hands or feet or eyes or ears or arms 
existing separately and working each for 
itself, but let there be only one heart that 
nothing can divide." In his preaching he 
seemed to thunder rather than speak. They 
rang the bells to drown his voice and drew 
their swords to intimidate him, and all 
equally in vain. 

CEcolampadius, the Melanchthon of Swit- 
zerland, appeared. He was as meek and 
quiet as Farel was impetuous. His books 
were his bosom friends. Tall, handsome, 
patriarchal in appearance, his influence in 



42 FBESBYTERIANISM. 

Switzerland was second in weight only to 
that of Zwingle or Calvin. 

Ulrich Zwingle is another name that 
will be known and honored as long as any 
of those inscribed upon the walls of the 
restored Church in Switzerland. Twenty 
miles from the south-eastern extremity of 
Lake Zurich, and two thousand feet above 
the level of the lake, there was a small vil- 
lage named Wildhaus. "The fruits of the 
earth grew not upon these heights. A green 
turf of Alpine freshness ascends the sides 
of the mountain, above which enormous 
masses of rock rise in savage grandeur to 
the skies." Here is a pleasant cottage " of 
thin walls, windows composed of round 
panes of glass, roof formed of shingles 
loaded with stones to prevent their being 
carried away by the wind. Before the 
house bubbles a limpid stream." 

In this lonely chalet, occupied by a family 
of the name of Zwingle, on New Year's 
day, 1484, seven weeks after the birth of 
Luther, a babe was born and named Ulrich. 



SWITZERLAND. 43 

As he grew up, the boy was sent to study 
at Berne, and having there become fami- 
liar with polite letters, went thence to 
Vienna to acquaint himself with philoso- 
phy. Again, at the age of eighteen, we 
find him at Basle, a teacher in St. Mar- 
tin's school and a student of scholastic 
divinity, until, weary with its babbling, con- 
fused inanities, he cast it from him in dis- 
gust. At the age of twenty-two he became 
priest of Glaris, not far from his native 
place. The spirit in which he entered upon 
his work at this place is disclosed in his 
own words : " Young as I was, the office of 
the priesthood filled me with greater fear 
than joy, for this was ever present to me — 
that the blood of the sheep who perished 
through any neglect or guilt of mine would 
be required at my hands." 

To equip himself for the solemn work 
before him, the young priest devoted him- 
self with all ardor to the study of the New 
Testament. Paul's Epistles he copied in 
Greek with his own hand, filling the mar- 



-i-i PBESB YTERIAXISM. 

gin with observations of his own and with 
quotations from the Fathers. 

From Glaris, Zwingle went to Einsidlen. 
Here he committed to memory the Epistles 
of St. Paul and afterward other books of 
the Old and New Testaments. Here he ob- 
tained still deeper insight into the knavery 
of the Church of Rome and the wrongs it 
inflicted on the people, and according to 
his ever-increasing light his preaching be- 
came more clear and evangelical. Here his 
education as Reformer was completed. 

And now Zurich called him — " cheerful, 
animated " Zurich, with its amphitheatre 
of hills covered with vineyards or adorned 
with pastures and orchards and crowned 
with forests above which appear the highest 
summits of the Alps. Zurich, the centre 
of the political interests of Switzerland, and 
in which were often collected the most influ- 
ential men in the nation, was the spot best 
adapted for acting on Helvetia and scatter- 
ing the seeds of truth through all the can- 
tons. Accordingly, the friends of learning 



SWITZERLAND. 45 

and of the Bible joyfully hailed Zwingle's 
nomination. 

Now began the great work and struggle 
of his life. It was on Saturday, the first 
day of the year 1519, Zwingle's thirty-fifth 
birthday, that he entered the pulpit of the 
cathedral church of Zurich — a pulpit that 
for centuries had spoken only in the name of 
the pope of Rome. Among his first words 
in that pulpit were these : " It is to Christ 
that I desire to lead you — to Christ, the true 
source of salvation. His divine word is the 
only food that I wish to set before your 
hearts and souls." The crowds came to- 
gether to hear his expositions of the Gospels. 
The common people listened to him gladly. 
" Bold and energetic in the pulpit, he was 
affable to all that he met in the streets or 
public places," and thus he won the hearts 
as well as instructed the minds of the 
people. \ 

In 1523 he secured the gathering of an 
assembly at Zurich and the passage of an 
edict which made the doctrines of the Ref- 



46 PEESB YTERTAXISM. 

ormation the largely accepted doctrines of 
the whole canton. In 1527, in a much 
larger assembly at Berne, Zwingle and 
others discussed the great doctrines of the 
gospel and mightily convinced many halt- 
ing ones. As a result, Berne adopted the 
Reformed worship, and in less than four 
months all the municipalities of the canton 
followed its example. 

Hexey Bullingee, too, heard and an- 
swered the reforming call. When three 
years old he would find his way into the 
church, climb into the pulpit and recite 
the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed. 
Y/hen a boy at school, like Luther, he 
gained his bread by singing songs from door 
to door. At the age of sixteen he found 
and opened the New Testament, and there, 
said he, "I found all that is necessary for 
man's salvation." From that time the 
Fathers were nothing to him, but he ex- 
plained Scripture by Scripture, as the Scrip- 
tures themselves command and the pope 
forbids. He acquired vast stores of learn- 



SWITZERLAND. 47 

ing, was one of the authors of the Helvetic 
Confession, and assisted Calvin in drawing 
up the formulary of 1549. He was a faith- 
ful, conscientious man, and one of the bul- 
warks of the Reformation. He was the 
successor of Zwingle at Zurich. 

Writes D y Aubigne : " The youthful Henry 
Bullinger, threatened with the scaffold, had 
been compelled to flee from Bremgarten, 
his native town, with his aged father, his 
colleague and sixty of the principal inhabit- 
ants. Three days after this he was preach- 
ing in the cathedral of Zurich. "No, 
Zwingle is not dead !" exclaimed Myconius, 
" or, like the phoenix, he has risen again from 
his ashes." Bullinger was unanimously 
chosen to succeed the great Reformer. He 
adopted Zwingle's orphan children, and en- 
deavored to supply the place of their father. 
This young man, then scarce twenty-eight 
years of age, and who presided forty years 
with wisdom and blessing over this church, 
was everywhere greeted as the apostle of 
Switzerland. 



48 PBESBYTERIANISM. 

Among this school of worthies was Os- 
wald Myconius. He was a native of 
Lucerne. His youthful eyes often glanced 
over the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons 
to the Rigi, and often up to the cloudy peak 
of Mount Pilatus. He was a schoolmaster, 
and at the same time a disciple of Him who 
said, " Learn of me." He taught at Berne 
and then at Basle. In 1516 he withdrew 
from Basle to become the superintendent of 
the cathedral church at Zurich. There, 
while he gave lessons in literature, he failed 
not to teach the unsearchable riches of 
Christ, declaring that " if the pope and the 
emperor command anything in opposition 
to the gospel, man is bound to obey God 
alone, who is above both the emperor and 
the pope." 

It was largely through the efforts and 
influence of Myconius that Zwingle came 
to Zurich. There, for a time, they two 
walked together arm in arm and fought 
together shoulder to shoulder. But a call 
came from his native land. He was made 



SWITZERLAND. 49 

head-master of the collegiate school at Lu- 
cerne. At his departure Zwingle was in great 
sorrow. " Your departure," he wrote, " has 
inflicted a blow on the cause I am defending 
like that suffered by an army when one of its 
wings is destroyed." Poor, faithful Mycon- 
ius ! Lucerne papists drove him and his 
feeble wife and child into exile, but God 
reaped a harvest from the seed he sowed. 

Fkancis Lambert also appeared. He 
was a Franciscan friar who lived at Avig- 
non. As soon as his neighbors began to 
take knowledge of him that he had been 
with Jesus they threatened him, and he 
fled to Geneva, where he preached the gos- 
pel ; then crossing the lake, he climbed the 
hill and preached the gospel at Lausanne ; 
next we find him where the rushing Sarine 
washes the bases of the heights of Freyburg, 
and the citizens of Berne listen to him 
while he denounces the mass, the traditions 
of Romanism and the superstitions and 
vices of the monks. There he goes in his 
monk's dress, riding on an ass, his legs so 



50 PRESB TTER IANISM. 

long that his bare feet almost touch the 
ground, on, on through narrow ravines, 
along dizzy precipices, over mountains and 
across the vales. He comes to Zurich, 
preaches four sermons, in one of which, his 
eyes but partially opened, he speaks with 
commendation of praying to the Virgin and 
the saints. 

A voice from the congregation calls out, 
" Brother, you are mistaken I" It is the 
voice of Zwingie. 

Lambert challenges Zwingie to a public 
disputation of the point. Zwingie promptly 
accepts. Great is the excitement in Zurich. 
What sadder to the believers, what more 
delightful to the papists, than a quarrel be- 
tween the Reformers ! 

A large assembly gathered. Zwingie 
spoke long and with great power, showing 
the folly and the sin of praying to the 
saints and the Virgin. Lambert's turn 
came to reply. Standing up, he clasped his 
hands together, raised his eyes to heaven 
and exclaimed : 



SWITZERLAND. 51 

"I thank thee, O God! that by means 
of this great and good servant of thine thou 
hast brought me to a fuller knowledge of 
the truth." Then turning to the people, he 
added, "Henceforth in all my troubles I 
will call upon God alone, and I will throw 
aside my beads." 

The next day he left Zurich, mounted on 
his ass, first visiting Erasmus at Basle, and 
afterward Luther at Wittenberg. 

Another champion of the faith in Swit- 
zerland was Thomas Wittembach. In 
1505 he preached in Basle. He was earn- 
est, of sincere piety, skilled in the liberal 
arts and in mathematics, and profound in 
his knowledge of the word of God. His 
lectures kindled a deep interest in many 
waiting hearts. Zwingle was among the 
charmed listeners to his words. " The hour 
is not far distant," said the lecturer, "in 
which the scholastic theology will be set 
aside and the old doctrines of the Church 
revived. Christ's death is the only ransom 
for our souls." 



52 PRESBYTEBIANISM. 

Among those listeners to the lectures of 
Wittembacli, at Basle, was a young man 
twenty- three years old, of small stature, of 
weak and sickly frame and of a tempera- 
ment in which meekness and intrepidity 
were singularly combined. His name was 
Leo Juda, the son of a priest of Alsace. 
He became the intimate and warmly- 
attached friend of Zwingle, and was his 
successor at Einsidlen. Leo played on the 
dulcimer and sang very sweetly. He studied 
the Oriental languages, and the works espe- 
cially of Jerome and Augustus. For eigh- 
teen years at Zurich he thundered against 
the abominations of the papacy both from 
the pulpit and through the press. Assisted 
by others, he, at the request of his brethren, 
undertook the translation of the Old Tes- 
tament, and toiled so severely at his task 
that his health gave way. When he died, 
one of the brightest lights of the Reforma- 
tion ceased to shine in the Church below. 

But among the great ones of the Refor- 
mation few were so truly great as John 



SWITZERLAND. 53 

Calvin. Of him Theodore Beza, in whose 
arms he died, has left this photograph : 

" Calvin was not large of stature ; his 
complexion was pale, his eyes peculiarly 
bright and indicative of penetrating genius ; 
he was equally averse to extravagance and 
parsimony. For many years he took but 
one meal a day. Of sleep he had almost 
none. His memory was incredible. Of the 
numerous details connected with the busi- 
ness of his office he never forgot even the 
most trifling, and this notwithstanding the 
incredible multitude of his affairs. His 
judgment was astonishingly acute. He de- 
spised fine speaking, and was rather abrupt 
in his language. He wrote admirably, 
and no other theologian of his time ex- 
pressed himself so clearly, impressively and 
acutely. 

"Endowed by nature with a dignified 
seriousness of manner and character, no one 
was more agreeable in ordinary conversa- 
tion. He could bear in a wonderful man- 
ner with the failings of others. He never 



54 PBESB YTEBIANISM. 

shamed any one by ill-timed reproofs, never 
discouraged a weak brother and never 
spared a willful sin. He was as powerful 
and strong an enemy to the vices of man- 
kind as he was a devoted friend to truth, 
simplicity and uprightness. His tempera- 
ment, naturally choleric, was subdued by 
the spirit of love. 

" Having been for sixteen years a witness 
of his labors, I have perused the history of 
his life and death with all fidelity, and I 
now unhesitatingly testify that every Chris- 
tian may find in this man the noble pat- 
tern of a truly Christian life and Christian 
death." 

Calvin enjoyed the friendship and assist- 
ance of two excellent men, Farel and Vinet. 
Calvin was a deep thinker, and loved seclu- 
sion; Farel was a large-hearted, impulsive 
and often rash Reformer. Calvin spoke 
vigorously, powerfully, with abrupt energy ; 
Vinet fascinated his hearers with the ex- 
quisite sweetness of his tone, language and 
manner. Luther's great theme was justifica- 



SWITZERLAND. 55 

tion by faith ; Calvin united the great idea 
of election with justification, and grounded 
the latter on the former. Luther saw in 
God the great Pardoner through the merits 
of his Son ; Calvin saw God as the omnipo- 
tent, all-wise Sovereign, selecting whom he 
would to be the recipients of his salvation. 
Luther was the champion of doctrinal truth ; 
Calvin added to his championship of the 
truth the rigor of the strict disciplinarian. 

Calvin was born at Noyon in Picardy, 
July 10, 1509. His mother was a beauti- 
ful woman, his father of manly mould. 
Calvin enjoyed all the educational advan- 
tages of his day. He was at first destined 
to the priesthood, but by the advice of his 
father he abandoned this and became a 
student of law. When he was twenty years 
of age, his soul was suddenly aroused to a 
sense of sin and danger. In his trouble, 
finding no relief in ceremonies and masses, 
lie flew to God in Jesus Christ, and on the 
death, of his father, in 1523, he went to 
Paris, determined to become a preacher of 



5 6 PBESB YTEBIANISM. 

the gospel. Now several important works 
issued from his mighty pen, and he was 
soon recognized as a leader in the great 
rebellion against the Roman apostasy. He 
prepared for Nicolas Coss, the rector of the 
great university of Paris, an oration full of 
the gospel, to be delivered on a feast-day 
before the people of the city. The author- 
ities, enraged at this, attempted to arrest 
Coss. He escaped. They then sent officers 
to arrest Calvin. He escaped, being let 
down from the window of his bedroom in 
a basket. 

In 1536 we find him at Geneva, where 
for twenty-eight years he wrought mightily 
in the cause of Reformation. Long before 
this, through the preaching of Farel and 
Vinet, a powerful work of reform had been 
accomplished in this beautiful city, and in 
1535, on the 27th of August, the senate had 
decreed that the Reformed faith should be 
the religion of the State. Here Calvin be- 
came preacher and teacher of theology. 
After his first sermon the congregation fol- 



SWITZERLAND. 57 

lowed him to his home to express their ad- 
miration and delight. An academy was 
soon organized and a catechism published. 
This catechism of Calvin was formally 
adopted by the council and citizens as con- 
taining their confession of faith. But this 
fervor on the part of the people gave place 
to indignation when, under the bold and 
pure teaching of the Reformer, they learned 
that religion, in addition to an orthodox 
creed, demanded a holy life, and, stung by 
his reproofs, they banished him from the city. 
After a time, one of Calvin's leading foes 
in Geneva having been found guilty of 
crime against the State, and having per- 
ished*in his attempt to escape, another hav- 
ing been executed for murder, and two 
others having fled to escape trial for trea- 
son, deputies were sent to him to entreat 
his return. After some natural reluctance 
to resume labors among so fickle a people, 
he re-entered Geneva in September of 1541 
amid the shouts of the multitude. He ad- 
dressed the crowd, reminding them of their 



SS PEESB YTEBIANISM. 

sins and telling tliem, with all plainness of 
speech, that unless they reformed their lives 
he could not live among them. He preached 
and labored incessantly, and so great was his 
fame that people flocked from other coun- 
tries to enjoy his preaching and instructions, 
whilst his judgment on ecclesiastical matters 
was sought for by the Reformers in every 
part of Europe. 

Through the influence of Calvin a thor- 
ough system of ecclesiastical organization 
and discipline was instituted throughout the 
republic of Geneva — a system whose influ- 
ence was powerfully felt, not only all over 
Protestant Switzerland, but throughout the 
Protestant world. According to this system, 
each church was organized under a body of 
elders, each one of equal power with all the 
others. This eldership formed the govern- 
ing body of the particular congregation. 
Next above this came the provincial synod, 
composed, with the clergy, of elders chosen, 
one or two from each church, and invested 
with oversight and control of all the con- 



GERMANY. 59 

gregations within the bounds of its jurisdic- 
tion. Then over all stood the General As- 
sembly, composed in like manner as the pro- 
vincial synod, and having oversight of the 
whole Church. 

Thus, in 1572, a powerful and nourishing 
Presbyterianism held the reins of influence 
among the snow-capped mountains of Swit- 
zerland. 

GERMANY. 

Memorable for ever in the history of the 
world will be the 10th of November, 1483, 
for on that day Martin Luther was born. 
It was the little town of Eisleben, in Saxony, 
that enjoyed the honor of being the birth- 
place of the man whose doings fill so many 
pages in the world's history. A solemn 
hour was it in the life of this man when, 
near to Erfurth, the thunderbolt fell at his 
feet, filling him with terror and teaching 
him a never-forgotten lesson of the power 
of the God he should one day serve — power 
to defend his friends and destroy his foes. 
Paul was smitten to the earth with a light 



60 PRESBYTERIANISM. 

above the brightness of the sun, Luther by 
a terrific flash of lightning. Memorable 
again both in his own history and in that 
of the world was the hour when, in the con- 
vent at Erfurth, Luther found that chained 
Bible that was to liberate the world ! 

Luther goes to Home in behalf of seven 
monasteries who are quarreling with their 
vicar-general. On his w T ay he tarries here 
and there in convents in which marble 
shines in walls and ornaments, silks rustle 
on the persons of the monks and sumptuous 
tables illustrate their abstemiousness. He 
reaches Rome. He enters the northern gate, 
and falling on his knees, exclaims, " Holy 
Borne, I salute thee !" Amazed and hor- 
ror-stricken at the pride, luxury, licentious- 
ness and profanity of all classes in Borne, 
he goes to the Santa Scala, that staircase 
of Pilate brought miraculously to Borne, 
and on his knees he creeps up, saying his 
aves and credos, when suddenly a voice of 
thunder in his heart cries out, "The just 
shall live by faith!" He hastens from 



GERMANY. 61 

Rome, and now at length, in 1517, we see him, 
a full-grown man, standing before the door 
of the church of All Saints in Wittenberg. 
There he stands, his eyes full of fire, a stern, 
solemn countenance, brave, high spirited,* 
intrepid, a hammer in one hand, a paper in 
the other. It is the 31st of October, at noon, 
on the day before the festival of All Saints. 
The church had been built by the elector 
and was full of relics. On its door he nails 
the paper containing the ninety-five theses. 
It was the shameless conduct of the 
shameless Tetzel that spurred Luther to this 
daring defiance of Rome. This man, a 
notorious adulterer, had come to Wittenberg 
to revive the traffic in indulgences. Pope 
Leo X. needed money, and Tetzel was gath- 
ering it for him. This traffic in indulgences 
had ever been a fertile source of replenish- 
ment to the papal exchequer. Tetzel boasted 
that he had saved more souls by indulgences 
than St. Peter ever saved by his preaching. 
" I was compelled in my conscience," wrote 
Luther, "to expose the scandalous sale of 



PR1 HANISM. 

indulgences. I found myself in it alone, 
and as it were by surprise ; and when it 
became impossible for me to retreat, I made 
many concessions to the pope, not, however, 
m many important points, but certainly at 
the time I adored him in earnest.' 3 

This act of Luther amazed Europe and 
won applause from thousand? who. while 
they admired, lacked the courage to imitate 
his heroism, for it was a fearful thing to 
lift the hand against the power that had 
come to overshadow the civilized world. 
At first, indeed, Pope Leo smiled at the 
opposition of this monk as a giant would 
smile at the resistance of a little child. Bat 
before a year had gone by his Holiness be- 
gan to perceive that the Eeformer was more 
than a child, and he issued his mandate 
bidding Luther within sixty days to pre- 
sent himself before the inquisitor-general at 
Rome. Frederick, elector of Saxony, Lu- 
ther's friend, obtained leave for the trial of 
Luther in Germany before Cardinal Cajel 
But, sixteen days after the citation to the bar 



GERMANY. 63 

of Cajetan, the bishop of Acoli, auditor of 
the apostolic chamber at Rome, condemned 
Luther as an incorrigible heretic. Luther 
presented himself at the bar of Cajetan, at 
Augsburg, but finding no prospect of a fair 
hearing, he withdrew to Wittenberg and 
appealed from the pope ill informed to the 
pope better informed. 

The ripeness of Europe for reform is 
abundantly evident from the marvelous im- 
pression produced by the stand taken by 
Luther, and the wonderful esteem in which 
his name was held not only notwithstand- 
ing, but because of his opposition to the pope. 
Charles Miltitz, a Saxon knight, being sent, 
in 1519, to negotiate with Luther in the 
name of the pope, said, " Martin, you have 
united the whole world to you and drawn it 
from the pope. I have discovered this at 
the inns on my way from Rome to Witten- 
berg. You are so much favored with the 
popular opinion that I could not with the 
help of twenty-five hundred soldiers com- 
pel you to follow me to Rome." 



64 PRESBYTERIANISM. 

Toward the close of this year, Luther 
with new light in his heart, began to pro- 
claim that in the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper both bread and wine ought to be 
administered to the communicants. This 
called down another storm of indignation 
from the bond-slaves of the papacy. 

In June, 1520, forty-one propositions 
from Luther's works, which in the shape 
of tracts, sermons, commentaries and letters 
now flooded Europe, were condemned as 
heretical, the reading of his works forbid- 
den on pain of excommunication, whilst 
such as had copies in their possession were 
commanded to burn them, and Luther him- 
self was charged within sixty days to recant 
under pain of excommunication and final 
deliverance to Satan. Luther, fearless alike 
of Satan and the pope, raised a great pile 
of wood outside the walls of Wittenberg, 
and there, in the presence of the professors 
and students of the university and of the 
vast crowd of citizens, committed to the 
flames the papal bull, together with the vol- 



GERMANY. 60 

umes of the canon law, the rule of the papal 
jurisdiction, and thus for ever separated 
himself from the Church of Rome ! 

Free now from all obligations to his old 
master, Luther set himself thoroughly to re- 
form the worship and doctrine of the church 
at Wittenberg, and of all the churches where 
his influence prevailed. In this work of 
God he was warmly and efficiently aided 
by large numbers of the learned in various 
parts of Europe. So rapidly spread the 
work, and so formidable were the propor- 
tions it assumed, that some extraordinary 
measures had become necessary to prevent 
the overthrow of the papacy in large por- 
tions of the German empire. According- 
ly, the emperor convened at Worms the 
General Assembly of the empire, composed 
of its princes, archbishops, bishops and 
many of its abbots. No sooner was the 
body well organized than the legate of the 
pope demanded the condemnation of Lu- 
ther. But Luther's friends were too many 
and too wise to consent to procedure against 



(j(j 1 *BESB YTEBIANISM. 

the Reformer in his absence, and without 
opportunity to answer for himself at the 
imperial tribunal. At the appearance at 
Worms of the man to whom God had 
granted the power and privilege of wielding 
the truth so mightily vast crowds came 
together, and even those who dreaded or 
hated his doctrine were filled with admira- 
tion at his intrepidity. For two hours, first 
in German, then in Latin, he expounded and 
defended the truth as he understood it, win- 
ning applause from a large proportion of the 
assembly. But, lo ! a sudden command from 
the emperor dismissed him to his home, after 
which the diet declared him an excommu- 
nicated heretic ! To prevent his assassina- 
tion, his good friend, the elector Frederic, 
sent horsemen to waylay him and hurry him 
to the castle of Wartburg, where for ten 
months he lay concealed from the knowledge 
and power of his enemies. 

In March, 1522, he reappeared at Witten- 
berg, and soon issued his translations of the 
New Testament. Copies of it were mtflti- 



GERMANY. 67 

plied and circulated. It was read by all 
classes with amazing avidity, and wherever 
read it was to the church of Rome like a 
light kindled in a chamber long closed, 
revealing dust and spiders and bats' nests 
and all manner of abominations. 

In 1525, Luther lost his efficient patron, 
Frederick the Wise, who was, however, 
succeeded by his brother John, both in the 
electorship and in the patronship of the 
Reformation. John at once took a decided 
stand. He placed himself at the head of 
the Reformers, provided a new order of 
worship, placed well-qualified pastors over 
the congregations, ordered the sacramental 
services to be administered in the German 
tongue and sent heralds through the empire 
to proclaim these important regulations. 
Stimulated by this bold and heroic conduct, 
other princes and other states joined in the 
work of reform, and accepted and proclaimed 
a similar form of worship, doctrine and 
discipline. From every part of Germany 
now came the call for men to preach a gos- 






68 FRESB YTEEIAXISV. 

pel faith in the ears of a waiting, eager 
people. 

On the left bank of the Rhine, forty miles 
north of Mayence, is the ancient town of 
Speyer or Spires. It has walls and ditches 
and five gates, and a venerable old cathedral 
that once contained the ashes of eight em- 
perors, three empresses and two imperial 
princesses. 

In this town two very important imperial 
diets were held. The first assembled in 
1526, and at this an attempt was made, 
though successfully resisted, to decree an 
enforcement of the condemnation passed 
against Luther and his adherents at the 
diet of Worms. The emperor was requested 
instead to call a full ecclesiastical council 
for the final adjustment of difficulties, and 
in the mean time each state and prince was 
left to its own discretion in matters pertain- 
ing to religion. Free for the time from 
persecuting hindrance, the precious leaven 
spread through the meal, and Luther put 
forth all his strength to consolidate the 



GERMANY. 69 

acquisitions thus far won to the cause of 
right and truth. 

But in 1529, much sooner than was anti- 
cipated, Charles V. convoked the second 
imperial diet at Spires, which annulled the 
provisions of its predecessor three years 
before, and declared every change in doc- 
trine, discipline and worship unlawful until 
the decision of a general council could 
be had. Against this decision, as iniqui- 
tous and intolerable, the elector of Saxony, 
the marquis of Brandenburg, the landgrave 
of Hesse, the dukes of Lunenburg, the 
prince of Anhalt, with the deputies of four- 
teen imperial cities, on the 19th of April, 
solemnly protested. Thus arose the term 
Protestants. 

The next year the diet was held at Augs- 
burg, a city of Bavaria, thirty-five miles 
north-west of Munich. It is a fine old 
town. A group of government offices is 
now covered by what was the roof of the 
episcopal palace beneath which the " Con- 
fession of Augsburg" was presented to the 



r- 



70 PBESB YTEBLANISM. 

emperor Charles V. To the diet at this 
place Charles had come in June, 1530, 
determined to effect some adjustment of 
the ecclesiastical troubles of the empire. 
Luther was ordered to present a scheme 
embracing the chief points of religious doc- 
trine. He accordingly presented seventeen 
articles of faith agreed upon at Torgau. 
These were enlarged by Melanchthon at the 
request of the princes, and the result of his 
work forms the noted "Augsburg Confes- 
sion." It contained twenty-eight chapters, 
and was publicly read in the diet. But the 
diet passed decrees against the Reformers 
more violent even than those of Worms. 
Nothing daunted, Luther exhorted the Pro- 
testant princes to courage and firmness. 
They met later in the year at Schmalkalden, 
and formed a league of defence against all 
aggressors, applying to France, England 
and Denmark for aid. Through their favor 
the Protestant princes, in 1532, secured a 
treaty with Charles at Nuremberg which 
amounted almost to a free toleration of 



GERMANY. 71 

Protestantism. Now again the Reformers 
throughout Europe, thanking God, took 
fresh courage and pushed on the work of 
God. This same year Henry VIII. was 
divorced from Queen Catharine and mar- 
ried to Anne Boleyn. 

A vast body of Protestants now lay in 
the heart of Germany, and for twelve or 
fifteen years, by dint of courage and vigil- 
ance, they not only held their ground, but 
extended their conquests. Pome became 
furious, and in 1541 gathered her adherents 
in conclave at Trent among the Tyrolese 
mountains. This council embraced six car- 
dinals, thirty-two archbishops, two hundred 
and twenty-eight bishops and a multitude 
of inferior clergy. The Protestant princes 
met in diet at Patisbon, and protested 
against the authority of the conclave at 
Trent. The emperor took up arms against 
the princes, and defeated them in a bloody 
battle. And now followed years of strug- 
gle, distress, humiliation for the Reform- 
ers and their followers, yet in many a prov- 



/ 1 PBESB YTE&IANISM. 

ince and city of growth in knowledge, purity 
and strength. 

During the years that followed the nail- 
ing of the theses to the door of All Saints 
church at Wittenberg, city after city and 
province after province had joined the cause 
of reform. At the head of the procession of 
cities came fifagdeburg. There Luther had 
gone to school, and many of his old acquaint- 
ances and personal friends were in authority 
and influence. One day an old weaver was 
arrested for singing a Lutheran hymn and 
offering it for sale. The citizens rose, met 
in a churchyard and appointed a committee 
of eight to manage church matters and 
appoint preachers. Other parishes followed 
the example. At length, on the 17th of 
June, 1524, the sacrament of the Supper 
was administered after the Lutheran man- 
ner in all the churches of the old town. 

At Brunsiviclc, and in most of the towns 
in this part of Germany, things took very 
much the same course. In all of them 
preachers of the truth appear, Lutheran 



GERMANY. 73 

hymns are sung by the people and the 
town council first resists and then gives 
way. In Gfoelar fifty men were appointed 
from the various £>arishes to carry out the 
plans of Reform. At Gottingen the people 
compelled the overseers of the commune to 
acquiesce in their schemes. At Eimbech the 
commune compelled the council to recall the 
preacher they had dismissed at the request 
of the canons. In Bremen the pulpits had 
become Lutheran as early as 1525. In 
Lubech, where the patrician families were 
in close alliance w T ith the clergy, Luther's 
commentary on the Scriptures was burned 
in the market-place. The citizens rose 
and appointed a committee of sixty-four to 
manage the Reform. . They recalled the 
expelled preachers, removed the adherents 
of Rome from every pulpit in the city and 
converted convents into schools and hos- 
pitals. 

"So powerfully did the spirit of the 
Reformation diffuse itself through Lower 
Germany: Already it had taken posses- 



7 4 FEESB YTERIANISM. 

sion of a portion of the principalities ; it 
was triumphant in the Wendish cities ; it 
had penetrated into Westphalia, and seemed 
about to pervade the whole character and 
condition of Northern Germany." In April, 
1535, the preachers of Bremen, Hamburg, 
Lubeck, Rostock, Stralsund and Luneburg 
entered into a convention in which they 
determined that in future no one should be 
permitted to preach who did not solemnly 
subscribe to the Augsburg Confession. 

Thus the great conflict- went on. At 
length, Maurice, now elector of Saxony, 
after years of skillful management, sud- 
denly flew to arms in the Protestant cause. 
Attacking the emperor, he came near cap- 
turing him at Innspruck, in 1552. Just 
at this time also Henry II. of France de- 
clared war against Charles, and the latter, 
yielding to necessity, opened negotiations 
with the Protestant princes assembled at 
Passau. The treaty of Passau guaranteed 
to the Protestants the free exercise of their 
religion, and pledged a diet of the empire 



GERMANY. 75 

for the settlement of the great religious 
question upon a reasonable and firm foun- 
dation. The diet met at Augsburg in 1555, 
and there finally concluded the celebrated 
"Peace of Religion," which gave religious 
freedom to Germany and established the 
Reformation. 

In this settlement it was agreed "that 
the Protestants who followed the Confession 
of Augsburg should be for the future con- 
sidered as entirely exempt from the juris- 
diction of the Roman pontiff, and from the 
authority and superintendence of the bish- 
ops; that they were left at perfect liberty 
to enact laws for themselves relating to their 
religious sentiments, discipline and worship ; 
that all the inhabitants of the German 
empire should be allowed to judge for them- 
selves in questions relating to religious mat- 
ters and to join themselves to that Church 
whose doctrine and worship they thought 
the purest and the most consonant to the 
spirit of Christianity ; and that all those 
who should injure or persecute any person 



7 G rEESB YTERIA NISM. 

under religious pretexts and on account 
of their opinions should be declared and 
proceeded against as public enemies of the 
empire, invaders of its liberty and disturb- 
ers of its peace." 

Of such immeasurable importance' and 
imposing grandeur was the work achieved 
by the blessing of God through the piety, 
learning and heroism of Luther and his 
coadjutors during the period of thirty-eight 
years between the years 1517, when the 
theses were nailed to the door of the church 
of All Saints at Wittenberg, and the year 
1555, when the diet of Augsburg decreed 
this religious settlement. 

Such, in the main, was the condition of 
religious affairs in Germany in 1572, just 
about one half century after the birth of 
the Reformation. The Church was for the 
most part at peace, whilst Luther and Me- 
lanchthon were sleeping side by side in the 
church of All Saints at Wittenberg. 



FRANCE. 77 

FRANCE. 

Turn we now to beautiful, guilty France. 
To France, God, in his providence, proffered 
the office and glory of being the banner- 
bearer to the Reformation. While Luther, 
in 1517, w T as climbing the Santa Scala at 
Rome on his knees and mumbling his Ave 
Ilarias, while Zwingle was fighting as a sol- 
dier in the pope's Swiss army, a great, deep 
work of grace was going on in France. 
Before this time the aged Lefevre had ex- 
claimed to his youthful pupil, Farel, " My 
dear William, God will change the face of 
the world, and you will see it !" Before this, 
Lefevre, turning with disgust from a com- 
pilation of the lives of the saints, which he 
said were fit only as " brimstone to kin- 
dle the fires of idolatry," completed his 
commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul. 
Before this he had discovered and pro- 
claimed in the Sorbonne itself, "It is God 
alone who by his grace justifies unto eternal 
life. There is a righteousness of our own 



78 FRESB YTEBIA NISM. 

works, and a righteousness which is of grace ; 
the one of man, the other of God ; the one 
earthy and passing away, the other divine 
and everlasting ; the one discovering sin 
and bringing the fear of death, the other 
revealing grace for the attainment of life." 

To these truths Farel and crowds of 
others listened with delight, and some noble 
spirits even now embraced the truth, and 
girding on their armor, enlisted for the war. 
•" Thus, if we regard dates," writes D'Au- 
bigne, "we must confess that neither to 
Switzerland nor to Germany belongs the 
honor of having been first in the work. 
That honor belongs to France. It ,was 
Lefevre and Farel who were first awakened 
by the voice of that trumpet which sounded 
from heaven in the sixteenth century, and 
who were earliest in the field on foot and 
under arms." 

Meanwhile there were two young people 
growing up together in the French court 
who were to exert no small influence on the 
cause. One was a prince, tall and of strik- 



FRANCE. 79 

ing features and a slave to his passions ; the 
other was his sister, vigorous in understand- 
ing and of fine talents, natural and acquired. 
The one, in 1515, became Francis I., king 
of France, the other was the princess Mar- 
garet of Valois, whom the king loved with 
exceeding tenderness. Margaret was of 
fine person, passionately fond of literature 
and full of wit. Her masculine judgment 
was often of great service to the king, her 
brother, in matters of moment to the State. 
Surrounded by the most disgusting licen- 
tiousness, she turned from the world to the 
gospel. She listened to Lefevre, to Farel, 
to Bri§onnet, the bishop of Meaux, and 
became a follower of Christ. " Thus, in 
the glittering court of Francis I., and in 
the dissolute house of Louise of Savoy, was 
wrought one of those conversions which in 
every age are the work of the word of God." 
Had Francis but followed in the steps of 
his beautiful and accomplished sister ! But 
this was not to be. His mother and Mar- 
garet's, Louise of Savoy, infamous for iniqui- 



80 PRESBYTERIAXIS2L 

ties, was more powerful with her son than 
was the word of God. Her every wicked 
wish was seconded and executed by her 
favorite, Duprat, " the most vicious of 
bipeds." With them soon went the Sor- 
bonne, followed by the whole rabble of 
ignorant priests, into furious opposition to 
the nascent Reformation. 

But the word of God grew — grew might- 
ily. There was at court a gentleman of 
Artois, named Louis Berquin. Pure in 
life, of extensive and accurate knowledge, 
he was also distinguished for the fervor of 
his attachment to his friends and for his 
compassion for the poor. He had a perfect 
horror of all dissimulation, and could not 
endure the sight of oppression. Opposi- 
tion to him on the part of the wicked drove 
him to the Bible ; it led him to Christ, and 
from this time Margaret, Brigonnet and 
Lefevre had a coadjutor in Louis Berquin. 

The work spread with wonderful rapidity. 
In no other country in Europe did the Bef- 
ormation meet with a reception so prompt, 



FRANCE. 81 

so warm, so general. "The danger/' said 
the foe, " is every day greater ; already the 
heretical sentiments are counted as those 
of the best-informed classes ; the devouring 
flame is circulating between the rafters ; the 
conflagration will presently burst forth, and 
the structure of the established faith will 
fall with sudden crash to the earth. " 

Persecuted in Paris, the Reformation 
spread into the provinces ; Farel, Mosurier, 
Gerold Poussel and his brother Arnaud 
left Paris and were warmly welcomed by 
Briconnet at Meaux. There, in his own 
diocese, this man toiled unceasingly. He 
visited all the parishes, called together all 
the clergy and all the church officers, cate- 
chised them, lectured them, exhorted them. 
In 1519 he summoned a synod of all the 
clergy in his diocese, and having examined 
one hundred and twenty-seven, found only 
fourteen of whom he could approve. 

In 1524, Lefevre published a French 
translation of the New Testament, and the 
next year a like version of the Psalms. 



82 PE ESB YTERTA NISM. 

Copies of the precious volume were multi- 
plied. They passed from hand to hand. 
They were read in the family and in the 
closet, and thus many new recruits were 
enrolled in the army of the Reformation. 
In the city of Meaux "many were taken 
with so ardent a desire to know the way 
of salvation that artisans, carders, fullers 
and combers, while at work with their 
hands, had their thoughts eno-a^ed on the 
word of God. On Sundays and on festivals 
they employed themselves in reading the 
Scriptures and in inquiring into the good 
pleasure of the Lord/' 

Through Margaret portions of the French 
version of the Scriptures were presented to 
her brother and mother. Nothing is im- 
possible with God. Even Louise of Savoy 
might be converted ! 

At Meaux the word reached John Le- 
clerc, a wool-carder. He was a man of 
martyr courage, full of zeal, and a natural 
leader of men in dangerous times. He 
went from house to house, strengthening 



FRANCE. 83 

and confirming the disciples in their faith. 
He wrote a proclamation against the Roman 
antichrist in which he declared that God 
would overthrow the monster, and he nailed 
his proclamation to the door of the cathe- 
dral. Rome, stung to madness, threw the 
offender into prison, whipped him through 
the streets three days in succession, his 
blood marking his progress, and then on 
the third day branded him on the fore- 
head with a hot iron. His mother looked 
on with all a mother's anguish, and then 
shrieked out, " Glory be to Jesus Christ 
and his witnesses !" The scarred confessor 
withdrew to Metz, where, for breaking the 
graven images which the people worshiped, 
he was burned alive at a slow fire, and thus 
died, the first of a long, awfully long, list 
of martyrs to the gospel in France. 

But Metz had been occupied with the 
truth. Through the labors of Leclerc, John 
Chatelain and Peter Toussaint the word 
found its way into many families, and among 
them not a few of high degree. 



84 PBESB YTER L 1 NISM. 

The persecutions that drove the saints 
from Paris and Meaux only scattered the 
seed. The exiles went everywhere, preach- 
ing the word, and great results began to 
show themselves in the countries of the 
Saone, the Rhone and the Alps. Anemond, 
a knight of Dauphiny, entered the ranks 
of the gospel. Active, ardent, ever impet- 
uous, his zeal gave him no rest. Full of 
enthusiasm, he went to Switzerland and then 
to Wittenberg, and did his utmost to per- 
suade Luther and Zwingle to go with him 
to France, for he was sure they could carry 
all before them. 

Francis I., accompanied by his sister Mar- 
garet, led an army through Lyons to battle 
with the soldiers of Charles V. In com- 
pany with Margaret was her Christian 
almoner, Michel d'Arande. At the com- 
mand of Margaret, Michel boldly proclaimed 
the pure gospel to a great conrpany drawn 
together by the novelty of the occasion, by 
desire to hear the word and by the favor 
with which the preacher and his doctrine 



FRANCE. 85 

were regarded by trie sister of the king. 
Co-operating with Michel was another man 
of great piety and discretion, Anthony 
Papillon, an accomplished scholar and, 
through the influence of Margaret, an in- 
cumbent in office under the king and mem- 
ber of the council. Thus Lyons became a 
centre of truth from which the rays shot 
abroad far and wide into the surrounding 
darkness. Michel d'Arande, under the 
protection of Margaret, kindled the gospel 
fires in Macon. Papillon and Du Blet 
sounded the trumpet in Grenoble. As 
early as 1524 there existed in Basle a Bible 
society, a religious tract society and an asso- 
ciation of colporteurs whose chief efforts 
were directed to the work of evangelization 
in France. The agents of these societies, 
poor, pious men, went here and there, from 
house to house, knocking at every door and 
offering to all the bread of life. 

Thus, amid hindrances and oppositions, 
the work of Christ in France went grandly 
on. In this city, in that village, in this 



86 PHESB YTERIANISM. 

and that lone hamlet, Christ crucified be- 
came known and embraced, and souls were 
saved and God was glorified. 

In 1535 the Psalms of David were trans- 
lated, versified and set to melodious music, 
and French fervor, vivacity and enthusiasm, 
under the impulse of evangelical spirit, 
poured itself forth in sacred song. " This 
holy ordinance charmed the ears, hearts and 
affections of court and city, town and coun- 
try." These sacred songs " were sung in 
the Louvre as well as in the Pres des Clercs 
by ladies, princes and by Henry II. him- 
self. This one ordinance alone contributed 
mightily to the downfall of popery and the 
propagation of the gospel. It accorded so 
wxll with the genius of the nation that all 
ranks and degrees of men practiced it in 
the temples and in their families. No gen- 
tleman professing the Reformed religion 
would sit down at his table without praising 
God by singing." 

On went the glorious work. Churches 
were gathered and duly organized. Con- 



FRANCE. 87 

sultations were held. Creeds and confes- 
sions were compiled. In 1559, just one 
year before the first General Assembly of 
the Church of Scotland, the first General 
Assembly of the French Protestant Church 
was held in Paris. This assembly drew up 
a confession of faith and canons of disci- 
pline. In this work the state had no hand. 
It was wholly the work of the Church her- 
self; and though an independent work, an 
original embodiment of principles of doc- 
trine fresh from the word of God, " it was 
remarkably harmonious with the confes- 
sions of other Protestant Churches, showing 
that under the teaching of God's spirit no 
good men, wherever they may be scattered 
and whatever their circumstances of trial, 
seriously differ in their interpretations of 
Scripture." In 1561, Beza presented a copy 
of this formulary to Charles IX. in the col- 
loquy at Poissy. It was confirmed in the 
national council of Pochelle, and signed by 
Conde, Nassau, Coligny and the synod, by 
the queen of Navarre, and her son, Henry 



88 PRESBYTERIANISM. 

IV, and was recognized by the Reformed 
of the French nation. 

In this confession and canons we read, 
" That the church in whose service a min- 
ister dieth shall take care of his widow and 
orphans; and if the church cannot do it 
through want of ability, the province shall 
maintain them." 

" The churches shall do their utmost en- 
deavor to erect schools and take care of the 
instruction of their youth, and all minis- 
ters shall endeavor to catechise every one 
of their flocks once or twice a year, and 
shall exhort them to conform themselves 
thereunto very carefully." 

" Every church shall endeavor to main- 
tain its own poor." 

" Fathers and mothers shall be exhorted 
to be very careful of their children's educa- 
tion, which are the seed-plot and promising 
hopes of God's Church. And, therefore, 
such as send them to school to be taught by 
priests, monks, Jesuits and nuns, they shall 
be prosecuted with all church censures." 



FRANCE. 89 

Concerning the state of the French Pro- 
testant Church at this time a contemporary 
writer says: "The holy word of God is 
truly, duly and powerfully preached in 
churches and fields, in ships and houses, in 
vaults and cellars, in all places where gos- 
pel ministers can have admission and con- 
veniency, and with singular success. Mul- 
titudes are convinced and converted, estab- 
lished and edified. Christ rideth out upon 
the white horse of the ministry with the 
sword and bow of the gospel preacher, con- 
quering and to conquer. Multitudes flock 
in like doves into the windows of God. 
As innumerable drops of dew fall from the 
womb of the morning, so hath the Lord 
Christ the dew of his youth. The popish 
churches are drained, the Protestant tem- 
ples are filled. The priests complain that 
their altars are neglected ; their masses are 
now indeed solitary. Dagon cannot stand 
before God's ark." 

During the twelve years that followed 
the meeting of the first General Assembly 



90 PRESS YTERIANISM. 

iii Paris there was a grand advance of the 
Christian army. In the year preceding the 
awful 1572 the French General Assembly 
met at Rochelle. In this assembly Theodore 
Beza presided as moderator, and there were 
present the queen of -Navarre, the prince 
of Navarre, Henry de Bourbon, prince of 
Conde, Prince Lewis, count of Nassau, the 
admiral Coligny and other lords and gen- 
tlemen. That General Assembly repre- 
sented and ruled over twenty-one hundred 
and fifty churches. In some of these 
churches there were ten thousand mem- 
bers. The church of Orleans had seven 
thousand communicants and five ministers. 
In the province of Normandy there were 
three hundred and five pastors, and sixty 
in Provence. 

Such was the Presbyterianism of France 
at the opening of the year of massacre, 
1572. 



THE NETHERLANDS. 91 

THE NETHEELANDS. 

Where people are free they will think, 
and where people think popery is always 
in peril, for under the shadows of well- 
organized popery the thinking is mostly 
done by proxy. What timid, sluggish 
thinking is done by the people must pass 
along the grooves channeled for them by 
an infallible pope and the subordinates 
taught and coerced by him. If an Abbe 
Michaud or a Dollinger dare to think outside 
of these grooves, he is smitten with the bolts 
of excommunication, and the poor Marets 
and Gratrys and Hefeles and Spauldings 
and Kenricks, who to-day think the truth, 
to-morrow, when the pope speaks, go down 
on their knees, beg pardon and pledge them- 
selves henceforth to think not their own but 
the pope's thoughts. 

The Netherlander were largely a free 
people. They were, therefore, a thinking 
people. They were a commercial and in- 
dustrious people, and hence they made very 



9 2 PHESB TTEBIANJSM. 

poor Romish slaves. For the life of them 
they could not see why the masses should 
toil and scheme and pay taxes and fight in 
the armies, while thousands of idle nuns 
and gross, fat monks should live in idleness, 
"trade in indulgences, squander in taverus" 
and revel in all sorts of licentiousness. 
Hence, writes Motley, "it was impossible 
that they, the most energetic and quick- 
witted people in Europe, should not feel 
sympathy with the great effort made by 
Christendom to shake off the incubus that 
had so long paralyzed her hands and brain." 
" At the era of the Reformation," writes 
D'Aubigne, " the Netherlands was one of the 
most flourishing countries of Europe. Sit- 
uated at the very gates of Germany, it would 
be one of the first to hear the report of 
the Reformation. Two very distinct parties 
composed its population. The more south- 
ern, that overflowed with wealth, gave way. 
How could all these manufactories, carried 
to the highest degree of j:)erfection, this 
immense commerce by land and sea, Bruges, 



THE NETHERLANDS. 93 

the great mart of trie northern trade, Ant- 
werp, the queen of the merchant cities, — 
how could all these resign themselves to a 
long and bloody struggle about questions of 
faith ? On the contrary, the northern prov- 
inces, defended by their sand-hills, the sea 
and their canals, and still more by their 
simplicity of manners and their determina- 
tion to lose everything rather than the gos- 
pel, not only preserved their freedom, their 
privileges and their faith, but even achieved 
their independence and a glorious nation- 
ality. " Few spots on this planet of ours 
have become the monuments of grander 
heroism in assault, defence and endurance 
than that narrow, half-drowned triangle shut 
in between France, Germany and the sea. 

From the earliest times the Netherlands 
had shown the spirit of revolt from the 
tyrannies and sins of Rome. By the mid- 
dle of the twelfth century the gospel heresy 
had there become troublesome to his Holi- 
ness. Then came the Waldenses, Albi- 
genses, Lollards, Bohemian Brothers, to 



94 PRESBTTEBMNISM. 

war in the Netherlands the war of faith 
and suffering, and there to endure the mar- 
tyr's death. Not even in Spain or Italy- 
did ingenuity ever devise forms of saint- 
murder more horrid than issued from the 
fertile wickedness of the monks in the 
Nether lands. In Flanders the heretic was 
stripped, bound to the stake, flayed from 
the neck to the navel, and swarms of bees 
let loose upon him to torture him to death. 
The curse pronounced upon the poor suf- 
ferers was truly Roman. The curser stood 
with a waxen torch in each hand, and in 
these words he cursed: "In the name of 
the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, 
the blessed Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, 
Peter and Paul, and all other saints in 
heaven, we do curse and cut off from our 
communion him who has thus rebelled 
against us. May the curse strike him in 
his house, barn, bed, field, path, city and 
castle ! May he be cursed in battle, in pray- 
ing, in speaking, in silence, in eating, in 
drinking, in sleeping ! May he be accursed 



THE NETHERLANDS. 95 

in his taste, hearing, smelling and in all his 
senses ! May the curse blast his eyes, his 
head and his body, from his crown to the 
soles of his feet! I conjure you, devil and 
all your imps, that you take no rest till 
you have brought him to eternal shame. I 
command you, devil and all your imps, that 
even as I now blow out these torches you 
do immediately extinguish the light from 
his eyes. So be it, so be it! Amen and 
amen !" And then the gentle soul blew 
out the torches ! 

But still the good work went on. The 
Bible, translated by Waldo into French, 
and rendered into Netherland verse, added 
to the number of converts. Toward the 
end of the fourteenth century the gales of 
heaven bore the doctrines of Wickliffe over 
the land. Erasmus did good service in 
exposing the abominations of popery. Im- 
perial edicts sought to resist the tide. One 
of them, in 1521, assured the people that 
"Martin Luther was a devil in human 
form, clothed in the dress of a priest." In 



% FU^ti YTERIAN1SM. 

1523 a Dutch translation of the New Tes- 
tament was published and circulated, whilst 
two Christians were burned at Brussels, and 
the martyrdoms and the Bible alike made 
new converts. Crowds of believers, driven 
from the city of Antwerp, assembled on the 
banks of the Scheldt to listen to the word 
of life. In 1536, William Tyndale, the 
translator of the New Testament for Eng- 
land, arrested at Antwerp*, was brought to 
the stake near Brussels, and first strangled 
and then burned, crying with his last words, 
" Lord, open the eyes of the king of Eng- 
land I" Other witnesses followed through 
bold service to the martyr's grave. 

In 1555, Charles V., now fifty-five years 
of age, abdicated in favor of his son, Philip 
IL, bequeathing to the Netherlands the 
Spanish Inquisition, more than fifty thou- 
sand martyrs' graves and a war of eighty 
years that swallowed up millions more of 
human lives, together with an edict (which 
was re-enacted by his successor) to the fol- 
lowing effect : 



THE NETHERLANDS. 97 

"No one shall print, write, copy, keep, 
conceal, sell, buy or give in the churches, 
streets or other places any book or writing 
made by Martin Luther, John (Ecolampa- 
dius, Ulrich Zwinglius, Martin Bucer, John 
Calvin or other heretics reprobated by the 
Holy Church, nor break or otherwise injure 
the image of the holy Virgin or canonized 
saints, nor in his house hold conventicles or 
illegal gatherings, or be present at any time 
in which the adherents of the above-men- 
tioned heretics teach, baptize and form con- 
spiracies against the holy Church and the 
general welfare. 

" Moreover, we forbid all persons to con- 
verse or dispute concerning the holy Scrip- 
tures, openly or secretly, especially upon 
any doubtful or difficult matters, or to read, 
teach or expound the Scriptures, unless they 
have studied theology and been approved 
by some renowned university, or to preach 
secretly or openly, or to entertain any of the 
opinions of the above-named heretics." 

All who violate this edict are to be pun- 



98 PJRESB YTER I A NISM. 

ished as follows, to wit : " The men with 

the sword and the women to be buried alive, 
if they do not persist in their errors ; if 
they do persist in them, they are to be 
executed with fire; all their property, in 
both eases, being confiscated to the crown." 
And, further, any persons who " lodge, en- 
tertain, furnish with food, fire or clothing, 
or otherwise favor any one holden or noto- 
riously suspected of being a heretic, or fail- 
ing to denounce any such persons, shall be 
liable to the above-mentioned jmnishments." 

In 1559, Philip II. withdrew to Spain, 
never to return to the Netherlands, leaving 
behind as regent the base-born Margaret 
of Parma. The next year the pope and 
Philip appointed three archbishoprics and 
fifteen bishoprics, whose incumbents were to 
work the inquisitorial machine. 

The appointment of these officers aroused 
a powerful opposition, drew attention more 
than ever to the doctrines of the Reformers 
and greatly increased the number of pro- 
fessed Protestants. Tracts were everywhere 



THE NETHERLANDS. 99 

distributed and largely read. Preachers 
boldly proclaimed the truth. The people 
assembled by thousands and went in pro- 
cession to the churches, chanting the psalms 
of David. 

But the enemy was not idle. In 1564 
the pastor of the Reformed church at Ant- 
werp was seized, and having been tortured 
by the Inquisition, was led out to execution. 
A vast crowd surged around the place of 
burning, and just as they were making an 
onset for the rescue of the confessor the 
executioner made his work sure by stabbing 
his victim to the heart ! 

As the Reformers were forbidden to 
assemble in chapels, in 1566 they inau- 
gurated a new era in the Reformation by 
adopting the system of worshiping in the 
open fields. Forth from the city gates they 
streamed in vast processions, and there, 
under the open sky, worshiped the God of 
heaven. This custom began in West Flan- 
ders, passed thence into Brabant, and then 
spread with such rapidity into the other 



100 PRESB YTEMANISM. 

provinces that soon there was not a lowland 
city but had its meeting, attended sometimes 
even by tens of thousands. The preachers 
exhibited heroic courage and amazing zeal. 
Many of the Reformed clergy were men 
of ripe scholarship, graceful accomplish- 
ments and fervid eloquence. Among them 
was Peregrinne de la Grange, of noble blood 
and of fiery spirit, " who galloped to the 
field, preached on horseback, and fired a 
pistol as a signal for the congregation to 
give attention." On Sundays and holi- 
days there was preaching in the vicinity of 
the large towns; and as the people were 
sometimes assailed during the time of wor- 
ship, they at length found it needful to fur- 
nish themselves with weapons of defence. 
"When they assembled, they placed the 
women and children around the pulpit; 
next around them the men congregated, and 
beyond the circle of worshipers a patrol 
was stationed. Sometimes for four hours 
together they listened, prayed and sung. 
When the service was over, the crowd 



THE NETHERLANDS. 101 

escorted their preacher to the town and 
furnished him with hospitable entertain- 
ment. 

And now the time for something like 
formal organization had come. As yet 
there was no common bond among the 
Protestants of the Netherlands, except that 
which united them in faith to their com- 
mon Lord. In 1562, however, the Nether- 
land Christians drew up a treatise under 
the title of "A Confession of Faith gen- 
erally maintained by believers dispersed 
throughout the Low Countries, who desire 
to live according to the purity of the holy 
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." It was 
sent to Geneva to be revised by Calvin, and 
having received his approval, was printed 
in Dutch and German. 

Thus the year 1572 found a powerful 
Presbyterian church in the Netherlands, 
baptized in blood and flame as perhaps 
was no other church, excepting that of 
the Waldenses. The northern provinces, 
Holland, Zealand, Utrecht and Friesland, 



1 02 rXESB YTERIANISM. 

Were almost unanimous in the faith, and 
large numbers of like belief were scattered 
throughout the southern portion of the land. 

ENGLAND. 

If to the Italians in the strongholds of 
the Piedmontese valleys it was given to 
continue the evangelical succession from 
the times of the apostles, the honor of 
sounding the first bugle-blast of Reform 
and of rebellion against Rome was con- 
ferred upon an Englishman. "If Luther 
and Calvin are the fathers of the Reforma- 
tion, WicklifTe is its grandfather." His 
translation of the New Testament into 
English not only showed the true path to 
reform, but sowed the fair fields of Eng- 
land with the seeds of life for coming gene- 
rations. Grass-blades of living green shot 
up in many a favored spot. Parliament 
was petitioned for Reform. Wicklififian 
theses, the "Twelve Conclusions," were 
fixed to the gates of St. Paul's and West- 
minster Abbey. William Sautre, for say- 



ENGLAND. 103 

ing, " Instead of adoring the cross on which. 
Christ suffered, I adore Christ who suf- 
fered on it," became the proto-martyr of 
Protestantism. In March, 1401, more 
than eighty years before Luther was born, 
Santre was burned alive at Smithfield. 
That Lollard tower, opposite the new Par- 
liament house on the Thames embankment, 
was filled with victims. Sixteen years after 
this the brave old Lord Cobham, for the 
sin of confessing Christ, was dragged on a 
hurdle to St. Giles' Fields, and there, sus- 
pended by chains over a slow fire, he was 
burned to death. 

But the smoke of martyrdom infected all 
it blew upon. The ashes of the martyr- 
fires scattered through the kingdom broke 
out not in " blains upon man and beast," 
but in deep, exciting thought, in great ques- 
tionings of heart, in anxious perusal of the 
holy word, in prayer and in numerous con- 
versions. The leaven crept through the 
masses from mind to mind, from heart to 
heart; and ere King Henry had thought 



104 PEESB TTEEIANJSM. 

of his divorce the divine Husbandman had 
crops ripening all over the kingdom. 

Thus the work in England was not the 
work of the many-wived Henry, nor was it 
largely the work of great men. " Those 
mighty personages we meet with in Ger- 
many, Switzerland and France — men like 
Luther, Zwingle and Calvin — do not appear 
in England, but the holy Scripture is 
widely circulated." 

About the time that Luther fixed his 
theses to the door of All Saints, Wittenberg, 
the New Testament in the Greek and Latin 
came to England from the press of Basle, 
and produced an amazing sensation. " It 
was in every hand ; men struggled to pro- 
cure it, read it eagerly, and would even kiss 
it." Never was there such a searchiug of 
the sacred word. The result was Protes- 
tantism. 

Take one example in a thousand. In 
Trinity college, Cambridge, there is a keen- 
witted but modest, even bashful young man. 
Troubled in soul, he applies to his priest for 



ENGLAND. 105 

advice. The priest prescribes vigils and 
fastings. The sufferer suffers all the more. 
His soul cannot feed itself on husks. He 
hears of a wonderful book. Obtaining a 
copy, he reads and is amazed. At length 
he comes upon the words, " This is a faith- 
ful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, 
that Christ Jesus came into the world to 
save sinners, of whom I am chief." " Ah !" 
he exclaims, " at last I have heard of Jesus ! 
My vigils and fastings and pilgrimages and 
masses were slaying me. Jesus saves." 
This w T as Thomas Bilney. He was arrested, 
but on the fourth appearance before his 
judges his courage failed, and he recanted 
and went back to freedom and misery. 
But he revived, and now he went about 
preaching the truth in private houses, in 
open fields, bewailing his weakness and his 
sin. Again he was arrested, and in 1531 
he was made the victim of that truly Bo- 
man Catholic remedy for opposition to its 
corruptions, burning to death at the stake. 
But still the wind blew the smoke and 



106 rRESBYTELIANISM. 

aslies of martyrdom abroad, infecting other 
hundreds and thousands. England is per- 
vaded, and is all alive with the holy leaven. 

And now a new seed-sower came. Wil- 
liam Tyndale had translated the New Tes- 
tament into English. It had been printed 
partly at Cologne, partly at Worms. In 
1525 it was brought stealthily across the 
sea and up the Thames and by night to 
Honey lane, a narrow thoroughfare adjoin- 
ing Cheapside, to the house of a poor and 
pious curate, Thomas Garret. He read until 
at last he sighed, "His word was in mine 
heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, 
and I was weary with forbearing and I could 
not stay." So he went abroad with the 
word. He sold it to laymen and priests 
and monks, and thus the word went un- 
bound through the realm. 

The blessed word was read with amazing 
avidity and delight. Women committed 
the Gospels and Epistles to memory. One 
woman gave a copy of the Epistles of Paul 
to her son, saying, "My son, live according 



ENGLAND. 107 

to these writing, and not according to the 
teachings of the clergy." He read three 
Epistles. He procured the whole New Tes- 
tament, and read it through many times. 
One day, learning that Bilney was preaching 
at Ipswich, he went to hear him, and ex- 
claimed, " Oh what a sermon ! How full 
of the Holy Ghost !" 

Now meetings for reading and hearing 
the word and for prayer began to be mul- 
tiplied. Not only the cottages of the poor, 
but in some instances the palaces of the 
rich, were opened for these meetings. 
Among these was Bower Hall, the resi- 
dence of the squires of Bumpstead, and 
Foxe and Topley and Tyball often read 
the Scriptures there in the presence of the 
master and all his household. 

Borne says that we can know the Scrip- 
tures only through the Bomish Church. 
How, then, did the cottagers of England so 
quickly recognize the word of God ? I have 
a father, suppose, whom I have never seen, 
but I have heard of him; I know much 



1 08 PRESS YTERIANISM. 

about him, and now letter after letter pur- 
porting to come from him is put into my 
hand. I read, and I know that no one but 
my own dear father could write thus to me. 
So the human spirit, under the tuition of 
the Holy Spirit, knows that the pages of the 
Bible are alive with the words and thoughts 
of the great, good Father in heaven. 

But while the word of God is thus mak- 
ing its way among the people of England, 
Wolsey has fallen, the king is divorced and 
Henry VIII. is become a pope in England. 
And now began a fearful struggle between 
the new pope and his Christian subjects. 
They had learned the will of God from 
God's own book, and they must accept it as 
the rule of duty, King Henry's will ! 
From that day to this the headship of the 
monarch in the English Church has been 
the source of nearly all its weakness and 
of its many and fearful corruptions. 

In 1539 the king appointed a commis- 
sion to draw up articles for the direction 
of the Church in doctrine and worship. 



ENGLAND. 109 

Six articles were the result, enjoining upon 
the whole realm, on penalty of imprison- 
ment, forfeiture of property, or death as 
heretics, these items : The real presence in 
the sacrament, communion in one kind only, 
the celibacy of the priesthood, the strict 
observance of vows of chastity, priests' 
masses and auricular confession. Thus 
the government would compel the retention 
of a meagrely modified popery, while the 
seeds of a pure religion were bearing rich 
and ample fruit among the masses. In 
the collision between these two forces mul- 
titudes of God's own people were ground 
to powder. 

The question is not without interest, 
though it is more easily asked than an- 
swered, How early in England did a distinct- 
ive Presbyterianism make its appearance? 
On the Continent, under the lead of highly 
gifted men interpreting to the people the 
word of God, the Church in abandoning 
the papacy unanimously betook itself to 
Presbyterianism. It would be very strange, 



1 10 PRESB VTERTANISM. 

therefore, if in England, where the real 
Reformation originated among the people, 
under the teachings of the New Testament, 
the same form of Church polity should not 
have asserted and made good its claims. 
Harassed by persecution, there was for some 
time little thought except how to feed the 
soul with the food of salvation. But even 
in their earlier efforts to live they found 
that preachers were a necessity, and that in 
pressing exigencies the Church, the little 
assembly of hated, hunted believers, were 
fully competent to appoint a ministry with- 
out leave of priest, bishop or pope. This 
right carried with it the right to model the 
worship of Christian assemblies in accord- 
ance with their view of the teachings of 
God's word, the mandate of a more than 
semi-popish sovereign to the contrary not- 
withstanding. From the collision between 
this humble Church and the government 
sprang Puritanism. This Puritanism was 
partly Episcopal, more largely independent, 
very largely Presbyterian. 



ENGLAND. Ill 

Perhaps the earliest formal Presbyterian- 
ism in the realm was foreign rather than 
native. 

In the English Channel, one hundred and 
sixty miles south-west of Southampton, is 
the triangular, rock-girt island of Guernsey, 
having in our day a population of thirty 
thousand. In the tenth century it bore 
the name of the Holy Isle, on account of 
the swarms of monks and ecclesiastics that 
infested it. South-east of Guernsey is the 
quadrangular isle of Jersey, with its high 
northern coast, from which its surface slopes 
along toward the south. It has now a popu- 
lation of nearly sixty thousand souls. 

These islands, so near the coast of France, 
offered a tempting asylum to the hunted 
Huguenots, and at an early day, through 
their influence, they became the scene of 
gracious revivals and the site of a thorough 
Presbyterianism. 

Of the churches in these isles " Peter 
Heylin, D.D., chaplain to" — and we might 
almost add worshiper of — " Charles I. and 



1 1 2 PRESB YTEBIANISM. 

Charles II., monarch of Great Britain," 
thus writes : 

" The isles of Guernsey and Jersey, the 
only remainder of the crown of England 
in the dukedom of Normandy, had enter- 
tained the Reformation in the reign of King 
Edward. But the Reformed religion, being 
suppressed in the time of Queen Mary, re- 
vived again immediately after her decease 
by the diligence of such French ministers 
as had resorted thither for protection in the 
day of their troubles. These French min- 
isters, desiring to have all thing modeled by 
the rules of Calvin, endeavored by all the 
means they could to advance his discipline, 
to which they were encouraged by the 
brothers here and the Germans there. In 
pursuance of this plot, both islands joined 
in confederacy to petition of the queen for 
an allowance of the discipline, Anno 1563. 
They received a gracious answer. In the 
mean time the queen, being strongly per- 
suaded that this design would advance the 
Reformation in those islands, was content to 



ENGLAND. 113 

give way unto it in the towns of St. Peter's 
and Port St. Hillaries only, but no further. 
An authoritative letter was accordingly sent 
to those islands in these terms : 

" ' After our very hearty commendations 
unto you, whereas the queen's most excel- 
lent Majesty understandeth that these the 
isles of Guernsey and Jersey have anciently 
depended on the diocese of Constance, and 
that there be certain churches in the same 
diocese well reformed, agreeable throughout 
in the doctrine as set forth in this realm, 
knoweth therewith that they have a minis- 
ter which ever since his arrival in Jersey 
hath used the like order of preaching and 
administration as in the said Reformed 
church, or as it is used in the French 
church of London, her Majesty, for divers 
respects and considerations moving her 
Highness, is well pleased to admit the same 
order of preaching and administration to 
be continued at St. Hillaries as hath been 
hitherto accustomed by the said minister; 
provided always that the residue of the 



114 rRESB YTERIANISU. 

parishes in the said isle shall diligently put 
aside all superstitions used in said diocese, 
and so continue there the order of service 
ordained within this realm.' " 

The same permission was also granted to 
the port of St. Peter's in the island of Guern- 
sey. " In prosecution of which counsels 
the ministers and elders of both churches 
held their first synod in the isle of Guern- 
sey on the 2d of September, Anno 1587, 
where they concluded to advance it by 
degrees in all the rest of the parishes, as 
opportunity should serve and the condition 
of affairs permit." 

Thus, though the edict of Queen Eliza- 
beth allowed the Presbyterian "preaching 
and administration" in one town only in 
each island, yet the "general plan was 
adopted by the decree of synods held under 
the countenance of the governors of Guern- 
sey and the neighboring isles." In 1603, 
King James confirmed this permission and 
that to the whole island without limitation. 
This was their ecclesiastical polity in 1572. 



ENGLAND. 115 

Seeds of Presbyterianism proper were 
largely sown in England by distinguished 
champions of the Genevan discipline who 
from various causes took up their abode in 
the realm. In 1549, John a Lasco, on the 
the invitation of Cranmer, came to Lon- 
don to assist in the Reformation. He was 
a Polander of noble birth. Famous for his 
talents, his eloquence, his erudition and the 
purity of his life and character, he was wel- 
comed everywhere, not by the learned only, 
but even by kings and princes. In Swit- 
zerland he visited Zwingle, and through his 
instrumentality was converted to God in 
Christ Jesus. In England . he acquired 
very great influence. In 1550 a church 
of German refugees was established in 
London, and the church of the Augustin 
friars granted them as a place of worship. 

This church, thus organized, was " erected 
into a corporation under the direction of 
John a Lasco, superintendent of all for- 
eign churches in London, with whom were 
joined four other ministers, and as a mark 



1 1 6 PEESB YTERIA NISM. 

of favor three hundred and eighty of the 
congregation were made denizens of Eng- 
land. The preamble to the patent sets forth 
that the German church made profession 
of pure and uncorrupted religion, and was 
instructed in truly Christian and apostol- 
ical opinions and rites." In the patent, sol- 
emn command is laid upon the " lord mayor, 
aldermen and magistrates of the city, and 
all archbishops, bishops and justices of the 
peace, to permit said superintendent and 
ministers to enjoy and exercise their own 
proper rites and ceremonies. " Of which, 
poor Chaplain Heylin complains : " The in- 
conveniences whereof were not seen at the 
first, and when they were perceived were not 
easily remedied." He further moans that 
they were greatly assisted by " Sir Francis 
Knollis," who among other misfortunes 
" had retired from Frankfort to Geneva, 
and did there contract acquaintance with 
these sore troublers of the pope's peace," 
Calvin and Beza and the rest of the con- 
sistorians, whose cause he managed at the 



ENGLAND. 117 

court upon all occasions, having great influ- 
ence as comptroller of the household. 

Besides this church there arose in Lon- 
don another, composed of French Presby- 
terians. The establishment of this church 
was due, in part at least, as the sorely- 
grieved Heylin writes, to the influence of 
" Goodman Gillie, Whittingham and the 
rest of the Genevan conventicle, who re- 
pined and grudged at the Reformation (in 
England) because not fitted to their plian- 
cies and Calvin's platform." Through them 
we are left to infer a letter was secured 
from Calvin to Bishop Grindal begging 
that "by his countenance or connivance 
such of the French nation as had been 
forced by their conscience to flee into Eng- 
land might be permitted the free exercise 
of their religion. By whose solicitation the 
church of St. Anthony, not far from Mer- 
chant Taylors' hall, was assigned to the 
French, with liberty to erect the Genevan 
discipline for ordering the affairs of their 
congregations, and to set up a form of prayer 



118 rBESB YTEUIAXISiM. 

which had no manner of conformity with 
the English liturgy." Alas! this "tolera- 
tion of presbytery in a church founded and 
established by the rules of episcopacy could 
end in nothing but the advancing of a com- 
monwealth in the midst of a monarchy." 

Thus Presbyterianism in England had 
before its eyes for its instruction, encour- 
agement and direction these large, strong 
and thoroughly-organized congregations. 

Among the most remarkable eras in the 
history of English Presbyterianism was the 
fi.ve years' reign of the bloody Mary. The 
rod laid on the back of Puritanism by King 
Henry the Eighth was no pliant twig. But 
Mary, in her salutation to the people, when 
she put on the crown, said to them, " My 
father made your yoke heavy, and I will 
add to your yoke ; my little finger shall be 
thicker than my father's loins; my father 
chastised you with whips, I will chastise 
you with scorpions." And she did ! How 
thoroughly and terribly we may judge by 
the fact that during her brief reign some 



ENGLAND. 119 

four hundred persons were publicly put to 
death in various ways, besides those who 
were secretly murdered in prison ; " of these 
twenty were bishops and dignified clergy- 
men, sixty were women, among whom some 
were big with child, and above forty were 
children." Even the bones of the eminent 
dead were dug up and cited by the royal 
inquisitors to appear in court and answer 
charges against them, and then burned for 
non-appearance ! Verily, she chastised with 
scorpions ! 

Vast numbers, however, fled to the Con- 
tinent, to France, to Geneva, to Basle, 
Frankfort, Emden, Strasburg, Dorsburg 
and Zurich, where they were received with 
all tenderness. Hundreds upon hundreds 
of these fugitives thus scattered themselves 
over continental Europe — bishops, deans, 
doctors of divinity, eminent preachers, no- 
blemen, merchants, tradesmen, artificers and 
many also of the poor common people. In 
many of these places these people, learned 
and unlearned, clergy and laymen, became 



1 20 PRESB YTEEIANISM. 

more fully acquainted with thoroughly- 
organized Presbyterianism. They were 
most hospitably entertained, and thus be- 
came well acquainted with those who had 
organized congregations, presbyteries and 
synods on the Presbyterian plan. They 
became familiar with the views of the great 
Presbyterian Reformers, and with the argu- 
ments by which those views were substan- 
tiated. They had now free access to the 
extant Presbyterian literature, to peruse, to 
study and to compare with Scripture at 
their leisure. 

At the death of Mary and the accession 
of Elizabeth, in 1558, these exiles, clerical 
and lay, eagerly betook themselves to their 
English homes, many of them sorely impov- 
erished, carrying back with them little but 
their new knowledge of religion and a zeal 
new kindled by persecution, and very many 
of them now thoroughly Presbyterian in 
their views of church polity. Inasmuch as 
that modern curiosity, High Churchism, was 
then unknown, very many of the preachers 



ENGLAND. 121 

imbued with these principles were placed in 
the pulpits of the national church, and thus 
furnished with opportunities for the pro- 
mulgation of Presbyterian views. 

Various causes had conspired to empty 
the pulpits of the realm. A fearful disease 
had swept many of the incumbents to the 
grave, and the refusal of many more to sub- 
mit to the queen's supremacy had left a 
large proportion of the parochial churches 
vacant. Hence, writes Heylin, " Such was 
the necessity which the Church was under 
that it was hardly possible to supply all the 
vacant places in it but by admitting some 
of the Genevan zealots to the public minis- 
try. Private opinions were not regarded, 
nothing was more considered in them than 
zeal against popery, and their abilities in 
divine and human studies to make good 
that zeal. 

" And if so many were advanced to places 
of note and eminence, there is no question 
to be made but that some numbers of them 
were admitted into country cures, by means 



122 FEESB YTERIANISM. 

whereof they had as great an opportunity 
as they could desire not only to dispute 
their Genevan doctrines, but to prepare the 
people committed to them for receiving such 
innovations, both in worship and govern- 
ment, as were resolved in time convenient 
to be put upon them." 

The exiles had brought with them on their 
return numerous copies of the Genevan 
Bible, with its notes and comments, which 
formed another element in the powerful 
leaven working in the realm. Many of the 
returned preachers labored as they dared 
" with all diligence to bring the Church of 
England to a conformity in all points with 
the rules of Geneva. These, although the 
queen had laid by the heels" (Heylin, of 
course), "yet it is incredible how upon a 
sudden their followers increased in all parts 
of the kingdom, and this upon a double 
account ; first, by the negligence of some and 
the connivance of other bishops, and partly 
by the secret favor of certain great men in 
the court." Among these were the earl of 



ENGLAND. 123 

Leicester, Lord North, Lord Knollis and 
Lord Walsingham, " who knew how might- 
ily some of the Scotts lords and gentlemen 
had, in short time, improved their fortune 
by humoring their Knoxian brethren in the 
Reformation." 

The motive is attributed by Heylin ; the 
fact is all we need care for. 

At length, in May, 1572, Parliament met 
and showed some disposition toward, if not 
a Puritan reform, at least a mitigation of 
royal rigors in dealing with the Puritans. 
To this Parliament leading Puritans ad- 
dressed a treatise setting forth their griev- 
ances, presenting a platform for Church 
government, for the election of ministers, 
affirming their equality and specifying 
their duties, and pleading for the establish- 
ment by law of a discipline more consonant 
with the word of God and in agreement 
with that of the Reformed churches. The 
authors of this treatise presented it in per- 
son to the House of Commons, and were 
sent to prison for their pains. This tyran- 



121 PF.ESB YTEBIANISM. 

nous rejection of this petition resulted in 
the organization of the first English pres- 
bytery. 

Situated on both sides of the river AVan- 
del at its junction with the Thames, Rye 
miles from the general post-office in Lon- 
don, is the village of Wandsworth. Far 
enough from the court to be out from under 
the royal eye, near enough to be "within 
reach of fraternal correspondence and sym- 
pathy with their friends in the city, this 
town was chosen by the Puritans as the 
place for effecting the proposed organization. 
At this place, on the 20th of November, 
1572, assembled in strictest secresy a small 
body of ministers, with a considerable com- 
pany of laymen, and organized a presbytery. 
Eleven elders were chosen, and their offices 
described in a register entitled the " Orders 
of Wandsworth." 

Thus in the year 1572 we find a vast 
body of Presbyterians scattered through 
England, and besides the churches in the 
islands of Guernsey and Jersey, and the 



SCOTLAND. 125 

foreign churches in London, the English 
presbytery organized at Wandsworth. 

SCOTLAND. 

The moral and religious condition of 
Scotland just before the Reformation was 
such as to call a blush to the cheek of 
Rome, were it not that Rome's cheek had 
been long beyond the reach of a blush. 
Half of the wealth of the nation belonged 
to the clergy, and most of this half was in 
the hands of a few individuals. Ecclesias- 
tics rivaled the nobility in magnificence and 
preceded them in honors. Inferior benefices 
were often put up for sale, or bestowed on 
the illiterate and unworthy minions of cour- 
tiers. The lives of the clergy were scan- 
dalously licentious. Monasteries covered 
the land, and were notoriously the haunts 
of lewdness and debauchery. The king- 
dom swarmed with ignorant, idle and luxu- 
rious monks who like locusts devoured the 
fruits of the lands. The people were sunk 
in profoundest ignorance. Under the teach- 



126 PRESBYTERIANISM. 

ing of tlieir superiors they were thoroughly 
persuaded that the chief end of man, as a 
religious being, consisted in reciting aves 
and credos, attending upon the duties of the 
confessional, paying tithes, making offerings, 
paying for masses, going on pilgrimages, 
refraining from eating flesh on Fridays, 
and in doing whatever else was contrary 
to sound doctrines and to common sense. 

Thus much had Romanism done to civ- 
ilize and Christianize the people. Into this 
scene of infamy came Presbyterian Protes- 
tantism to scourge out the desecrators that 
made merchandise of the souls of men, to 
overturn the tables of the money-changers, 
and to turn the whole den of thieves into a 
house of prayer. The first beams of light 
penetrating this darkness came from Wick- 
liffe, the morning-star of Reform. Early 
in the fifteenth century John Resby, a dis- 
ciple of Wickliffe, came from England into 
Scotland, and popery burned him. Twenty- 
five years later came Paul Craw, a Bohe- 
mian disciple of Huss, preaching the truth, 



SCOTLAND. 127 

and be, too, soon found a martyr's grave. 
In 1528, Patrick Hamilton, of royal line- 
age and fine intellectual endowments, came 
home from his communings with Luther 
and Melanchthon, and lifted up his voice 
for Reform ; and on the last day of Febru- 
ary, James Beaton, archbishop of St. An- 
drews, burned him at the stake. Such was 
the effect of this atrocious murder upon the 
public mind that one said to the archbishop, 
still breathing out threatening and slaugh- 
ter, " If your reverence will burn any more, 
it were well you did it in a cellar, for the 
smoke of Hamilton hath infected all it 
blew on." 

But who can successfully oppose the 
mighty word of God, the fire and hammer 
that breaketh the rock in pieces, sharper 
than any two-edged sword, mighty through 
God to the pulling down of strongholds? 
The leaven had now been so long and 
powerfully working among the people, the 
hideousness of popery had now become so 
widely spread and the spirit of men so 



128 PBESBYTEBIANISM. 

thoroughly aroused that in December, 1557, 
there was a grand coming together of the 
reforming lords and gentry of the realm at 
Edinborough, who formed and subscribed 
this bond : 

" We, perceiving how Satan, in his mem- 
bers, the antichrists of our time, cruelly 
doth rage, seeking to downthrow and de- 
stroy the evangel of Christ and his con- 
gregation, ought, according to our bounden 
duty, to strive in our Master's cause even 
unto death, being certain of victory in him, 
the which, our duty being well considered, 
do promise before the majesty of God and 
his congregation that we, by his grace, 
shall with all diligence continually apply 
our whole power, substance and our very 
lives to maintain, set forward and establish 
his most blessed word of God and his con- 
gregation, and shall labor at our possibility 
to have faithful ministers purely and truly 
to minister Christ's evangel and sacraments 
to his people. We shall maintain them, 
nourish them and defend them, the whole 



SCOTLAND. 129 

congregation of Christ, and every member 
thereof, at our whole power, and expending 
of our whole lives again Satan and the 
wicked power that does intend tyranny and 
trouble against the aforesaid congregation. 
Unto the which holy word and congrega- 
tion we do join us, and also do renounce and 
forsake the congregation of Satan, with all 
the superstitions, abominations and idolatry 
thereof, and moreover shall declare our- 
selves manifestly enemies thereto by this 
our faithful promise before God, testified to 
his congregations by our subscriptions at 
these presents. At Edinburgh, the third 
day of December, 1557 years, God called to 
witness." 

This the first step toward formal organi- 
zation of the evangelical forces is known as 
"The First Covenant." It was signed 
by the earls of Argyll, Glencairn and Mor- 
ton, Archibald, lord of Lorn, John Erskine 
of Dunn and a great number of distin- 
guished men, who were thenceforth called 
the " lords of the congregation." 



130 PRESBYTERTANISM. 

Rome responded to this protest by the 
martyrdom of Walter Mill, and the preach- 
ers responded to the martyrdom by passing 
through the land and preaching with new 
boldness and fervor the unsearchable riches 
of Christ. 

Few Presbyterians from abroad visit the 
beautiful city of Edinburgh who do not also 
visit the venerable house which was the resi- 
dence of several years of the Reformer Knox. 
It stands on the north side of High street, 
that memorable thoroughfare with the tow- 
ering castle at the western extremity, and 
sloping down for a mile to the noted pal- 
ace of Holyrood. It is a quaint, time- 
stained old pile of stone, irregular in its 
architecture, with narrow windows and 
outside stairway. It was in the narrow 
enclosure in the rear of this building that 
Knox was overheard praying, " O Lord, give 
me Scotland or I die." And it was in this 
house that Knox and a company of distin- 
guished coadjutors were met in deep consul- 
tation on the memorable first of August, 



SCOTLAND. 131 

1560. It was the day when Parliament was 
to assemble in the Tolbooth farther up the 
street. To this place of meeting the lords, 
now gathered at Holyrood, were to march 
in the solemn procession usually called 
" the riding of Parliament." " High street 
was already astir with multitudes eager to 
witness the spectacle, and congregating in 
grouj3S, anxiously speculating on the proba- 
ble issues of the meeting. The outward 
aspect of the crowds bore witness to scenes 
of recent warfare and lingering apprehen- 
sions of danger. The men were all armed, 
though not in uniform, each having armed 
himself with the weapons he could most 
readily procure, pikes, pistols, arquebuses 
or crossbows. Strangely picturesque must 
have been the scene as they marched about 
in this martial gear, with their long beards, 
voluminous coats and long flapping waist- 
coats." 

By and by the noise in the streets drew 
the inhabitants to the windows to gaze on 
the spectacle. But among all the gazers 



132 PRESS YTEBIANISM. 

few perhaps were filled with thoughts more 
solemn and emotions more profound than 
Knox and his associates. This Parliament 
was, under God, largely to affect the fate 
of the Reformation in Scotland. The eyes 
of Europe were fixed on that body. When 
it was organized, the all-important question 
of religion was introduced by a petition 
signed by many Protestants of different 
ranks, to the effect that " the anti-Christian 
doctrine maintained in the popish Church 
should be discarded, that means should be 
used to restore purity of worship and primi- 
tive discipline, and that the ecclesiastical 
revenues, which had been engrossed by a 
corrupt and indolent hierarchy, should be 
applied to the support of an active and 
pious ministry, to the promotion of learn- 
ing and to the relief of the poor" — one- 
third for the support of colleges and schools, 
one-third for the relief of the poor and 
one-third for the support of the ministry. 
The petitioners held themselves ready to 
prove that those "who arrogated to them- 



SCOTLAND. 133 

selves the name of clergy were destitute of 
all right to be accounted ministers of relig- 
ion, and that from the tyranny which they 
exercised and their vassalage to the court 
of Rome they could not be safely tolerated 
and far less entrusted with power in a Re- 
formed commonwealth." 

In response to this petition a committee 
was appointed, consisting of Johns, Win- 
raven, Spotswood, Willock, Douglas, Row 
and Knox, to draw up a confession of faith. 
In four days this body of men presented a 
confession in agreement with those of other 
Reformed Churches. The Protestant min- 
isters were on the floor of Parliament to 
defend the confession if assailed. No oppo- 
sition was made. Only two lords voted 
against it. In addition to the adoption of 
the confession this Parliament abolished the 
papal jurisdiction, prohibited under certain 
penalties the celebration of the mass, and 
rescinded all laws formerly made in support 
of the Roman Catholic Church and against 
the Reformed faith. 



1 34 PBESB YTERIANISM. 

In connection with this external national 
Reform, measures were taken by the minis- 
ters to con^lete the work among the masses 
of the people. Leading ministers were dis- 
tributed among the more important towns. 
But as the country parts were equally in 
need of ministers, and there was nothing 
like a sufficient number to meet the neces- 
sities of the case, the realm was divided 
into districts, and ministers appointed, with 
the title of superintendents, to see that the 
gospel was preached as widely as possible 
among the people. 

This memorable year, 1560, was fittingly 
closed by the meeting of the first General 
Assembly of the Church of Scotland. This 
meeting was determined on by the Reform- 
ers, clerical and lay, soon after Parliament 
had abrogated Romanism in the realm and 
legalized Reform. On the 20th of Decem- 
ber the Assembly met at Edinborough,- and 
consisted of forty members, thirty-four lay- 
men and six ministers. These six, how- 
ever, were men of theological and ecclesias- 



SCOTLAND. 135 

tical knowledge so ripe, of piety so pure 
and of influence so commanding as to leave 
no ground to fear either for the orthodoxy 
of the body in doctrine, or for the scrip tu- 
ralness of its measures with reference to 
church discipline. The same eminent men 
who had drawn up the confession of faith 
were appointed to frame a complete system 
of ecclesiastical government. For a pattern 
they looked as little to Geneva as to Rome, 
but away from both to the New Testament. 
When, after having spent much time in 
prayer, meditation and labor upon their 
work, they had brought it to a conclusion, 
they presented it to the General Assembly, 
by which it was amended and adopted, and 
has since been known as " The First Book 
of Discipline." . 

This book was too purely scriptural to be 
ratified by the privy council, but it was 
formally accepted and subscribed to by a 
large majority of its members. It provides 
for the minister or pastor to preach the gos- 
pel and administer the sacraments ; the doc- 



136 PRESB YTERIANISM. 

tor or teacher to interpret Scripture, confute 
errors and instruct in theology ; the ruling- 
elder to assist the pastor in examining dis- 
cipline and government ; and the deacon to 
have special charge of the revenues of the 
church and the poor. These were the pro- 
minent officers of the church. 

Besides these, the Book, to meet the exig- 
encies of the times, provided for certain 
superintendents to travel from place to 
place among the regions destitute of the 
means of grace, to preach, plant churches 
and inspect the conduct of the less afflu- 
ently qualified ministers in the country 
districts. It also provided for a class of 
laborers, termed exhorters and readers, who, 
though not fitted for the ministerial office, 
might yet do good service by visiting and 
giving instruction among the more igno- 
rant of the population. 

It further provided that the people should 
elect their own ministers. The affairs of 
each church were to be managed by the 
pastor, elders and deacons, who constituted 



SCOTLAND. 137 

the kirk session, and who were to meet 
as often, at least, as once a week. There 
were to be associations of ministers and 
elders, which soon became formal presby- 
teries. Above these were the provincial 
synods, and over all the General Assembly, 
composed of ministers and elders commis- 
sioned from different parts of the king- 
dom. 

In June, 1563, the Assembly met and 
established, as writes Hetherington, "one 
of the most important principles of our 
existing system of church government." 
It was "statute and ordained" that any 
person thinking himself aggrieved by the 
sentence of the kirk session should have 
liberty to appeal to the synod, and if neces- 
sary from the synod to the General As- 
sembly." 

The rapid growth of the Church in Scot- 
land is seen in the fact that while the first 
General Assembly, in 1560, consisted of 
only forty members, and of these only six 
were ministers, and these six ministers 



138 PBESB YTEB1ANISM. 

formed fully one-half of all the Protestant 
ministers in the realm, at the meeting of 
the Assembly of 1567, seven years after the 
first, "the Church embraced two hundred 
and fifty-two ministers, four hundred and 
sixty-seven readers and one hundred and 
fifty-four exhorters, and this growth was in 
spite of incessant opposition on the part of 
those in power, "bent on the destruction 
of the Church by every artifice that craft 
and malice could suggest." Nor was the 
rigor of its internal discipline at all behind 
its external growth. "Offenders of every 
kind and degree were compelled to yield 
obedience to its sacred authority, noblemen 
and ladies of the highest rank submitted 
to its disciplinary censures, lordly prelates 
were constrained to bow their unmitred 
heads to its rebuke; over the refractory 
members of its own body its power was 
extended in the impartial administration 
of even-handed spiritual justice, and even 
the stormy tumults of a fierce and turbu- 
lent populace were often quelled and hushed 



SCOTLAND. 139 

into peace and silence at the utterance of 
its calm and grave command. " 

Thus the year 1572 found in Scotland a 
most complete, compact and thoroughly- 
organized Presbyterianism. 



II 



III. 

THE CHAMPIONS. 

AYIXG now taken a rapid survey of 
the religious field three hundred years 
ago, let us set before our eye the chief 
champions on both sides who marshaled the 
hosts for conflict. 

1. First and foremost among the leading 
antagonists of Presbyterianism then, as in 
every age, was the pope of Ponie. The 
wearer of the triple crown at the opening 
of the year 1572 was Michele Ghislieri, 
alias Pius V. In sanctity this pope was, 
according to the Pomish standard, next to 
immaculate, while in persecuting spirit he 
surpassed the ferocity of the American sav- 
age. His bull, in coena domini, ordered to be 
read through all time, on every Thursday be- 
fore Easter, in every parish church through- 
out the world, excommunicates all princes, 



THE CHAMPIONS. 141 

magistrates and other men in authority 
who in any way favor heresy or interfere 
with ecclesiastical jurisdiction, who appeal 
from the pope to a general council or 
who say that the pope is subject to a coun- 
cil. In February, 1569, Michel e excom- 
municated Queen Elizabeth, absolving all 
her subjects from their oath of allegiance 
and consigning to perdition all who thence- 
forth submitted to her authority. He was 
in principle as bloody a persecutor as Nero 
or Diocletian. Among his proud, ferocious 
boasts was this : " I have no other object in 
life than that of suppressing heresy, and 
my efforts have received divine aid. I have 
converted many who departed from the 
faith ; the bodies of certain men who were 
leaders in heretical opinions I have caused 
to be dug up and burnt." His injunction 
to the French butchers of Protestants was, 
" Take no Huguenot prisoner, but instantly 
kill every one who falls into your hands !" 
So enthusiastic was he in his admiration of 
the demon Alva that he sent him a conse- 



142 PRESBYTERIANISM. 

crated liat and sword. On the first day of 
May, 1572, this one of the " chief monsters 
that plague the nations" passed to his 
account, and was succeeded on the 13th 
day of the same month by Hugh Buon- 
compagni, cardinal of St. Sixtus, who took 
the name of Gregory XIII. 

One of the first acts of this pope was the 
promotion of his illegitimate son John to 
the cardinalship. He had become father 
to this son before he became cardinal, and 
in his office as cardinal he seems to have 
been much less profligate than the present 
bosom friend of Pope Pius IX., the noto- 
rious Antonelli. Closely connected with 
the Guises of France, he was inexhausti- 
ble in his expedients for the destruction of 
Protestantism, and it was under his eye 
that the jubilations over the massacre of 
St Bartholomew were conducted. 

2. Prominent among the willing instru- 
ments of the pope was Catherine de Medici. 
This woman was a child of a highly-distin- 
guished Florentine family. She was the 



THE CHAMPIONS. 143 

daughter of Lorenzo de Medici and niece of 
Pope Clement VII. At the age of eleven 
she was left an orphan. Florence hav- 
ing revolted and expelled the creatures of 
the pope, he besieged it for eleven months. 
Catherine was then in a convent in the city, 
and so intense was the hatred of the Flo- 
rentines toward his Holiness that the city- 
council proposed to hang Catherine, his 
niece, in a basket over the walls that she 
might be a mark for her uncle's artillery. 
Well would it have been for her thus to 
have died and escaped the career of crime 
through which she passed to the grave ! 

Francis I. was now king of France. 
He had three sons. The second of these, 
Henry, was fourteen days older than Cathe- 
rine. King Francis was in need of money ; 
his son Henry was ready to take a wife. 
Lorenzo de Medici had his daughter Cathe- 
rine, niece of the pope, and Lorenzo was 
ready to furnish the wife, and the pope the 
money, on condition that Francis would 
accept the two together. The alliance was 



144 PRESBYTERIANISM. 

galling to the pride, but grateful to the 
purse, of the king; and being then in no 
fear that Henry would become his succes- 
sor on the throne, Francis reluctantly con- 
sented. 

Catherine was overjoyed. "Now," she 
exclaimed, " I shall be daughter-in-law of 
the great kiug of France !" With a bril- 
liant retinue she sailed for France, and 
the wedding was celebrated at Marseilles. 
Three years after, the king's oldest son was 
taken off by poison, and at length Francis 
died, an exhausted libertine, and Henry be- 
came king and Catherine queen of France. 

This woman was very beautiful, of con- 
siderable talent, of boundless ambition, of 
fathomless cunning, deceitful above all 
things and desperately wicked. She paid 
assiduous court to the notorious Diana de 
Poitiers, mistress of her husband, and vir- 
tually queen of France. In 1559 her 
husband was killed in a tournament and 
their son Francis II. became king, and his 
beautiful young bride, Mary of Scotland, 



THE CHAMPIONS. 145 

niece to the duke of Guise and the cardinal 
Lorraine, the queen. 

Catherine now thought herself virtually 
queen, since the sovereigns were so young 
and the king so feeble, but she was sadly 
disappointed. The Guises at once took 
complete charge of the royal puppets and 
of the kingdom. Poor Catherine ! But 
where there is a will there is a way. She 
now joined with the Huguenot leaders, and 
schemed to arrest and imprison the sove- 
reigns and make way with the Guises, and 
thus come to power. This plot being dis- 
covered and brought to naught, she joined 
the opposite party, and did her utmost to 
induce the king to have Conde assassinated. 
Francis refused, and one of the Guises 
exclaimed in his vexation : " Now, by the 
double cross of Lorraine, we have a poor 
creature for a king I" But this royal obsta- 
cle was not allowed long to stand in the way. 
He died suddenly, and not without the hor- 
rid suspicion that his mother had a hand in 
the murder. By the death of Francis the 



146 PRESB YTERIANISM. 

poor sickly boy, Charles IX., became king 
and bis infamous mother virtually dictator 
in the realm. "She now gave full swing 
to her atrocious genius ; She first plunged 
ber children into such a vortex of licen- 
tious pleasure that they were speedily 
divested of all moral sense," and thus ready 
instruments in any atrocity 

Such, in 1572, was one of the chief 
organizers of the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew — niece of one pope, a willing tool of 
another and a ringleader in all schemes 
for ridding France of the professors of the 
religion of Jesus. 

3. Next to Catherine, and co-operating 
with her as the most bitter foes of true 
religion three hundred years ago, were the 
Guises. 

In 1527, Francis I. bad made Claude, a 
son of the duke of Lorraine — an ancient 
province in the north-east of France — duke 
of Guise and peer of the realm. Of these 
Guises, in 1572, there were two upon the 
stage. One was Charles, brother of Mary 



THE CHAMPIONS. 147 

of Guise, uncle to Mary queen of Scots 
and a cardinal, a cordial hater of the 
Reformed religion and plotter for its over- 
throw. A second, who took good care to 
leave no one in uncertainty as to his share 
in the work, was Henry, duke of Guise 
and nephew of the cardinal. 

His father during the furious couflict of 
the times had been shot by a Protestant, 
and Henry had vowed bitter vengeance 
against the adherents of Protestantism. 
Restless, ambitious, full of intrigue, his 
ostensible zeal for religion was chiefly a 
cover for schemes for self-aggrandizement. 
This man was one of the leaders in the St. 
Bartholomew massacre. 

4. Confronting these as the great cham- 
pion of the truth in France stands the 
admiral Gaspard de Coligny. 

His father had been made grand-marshal 
by Francis L, and he was present at the mem- 
orable interview between his king and Henry 
VIII. of England on the " Field of the Cloth 
of Gold." His mother was Louisa, sister of 



148 PRESBYTERIANISM. 

the proud constable Montmorency. He was 
born 1517, the year of Luther's theses at 
Wittenberg. Brave to recklessness, his 
stirring spirit was charmed with the perils 
of a hotly-contested battle. In an age of 
utter licentious levity he was grave and 
serious in thought and deportment. He 
was "thoughtful, cautious, devoted to a 
principle, suspicious of an impulse, directed 
by conscience and mindful of his responsi- 
bility to his king, his country and his God. 
His character was the material of which the 
serious Huguenot, Puritan and Covenanter 
were made. More like Cromwell than like 
Conde, he would have been at the head of 
the army what Calvin was at the head 
of the Reformed Church. The word dis- 
cipline thrice given would have been his 
three rules of warfare. Success in battle 
he thought depended as much on obedience 
as upon courage ; his mode was not to raise 
a yell, make a rush and sweep all before 
him ; the living hurricanes should move 
according to laws. Although trained under 



THE CHAMPIONS. 149 

his raving, swearing, mass-lipping old uncle, 
lie went calmly to work and coolly finished 
it. A victory did not exalt him more than 
a defeat cast him down. Of all the Hugue- 
not chiefs he was the lion-hearted, and 
neither wife nor comrade nor king could 
ever charge him with infidelity." Thus 
eloquently writes his American biographer, 
Dr. Wm. M. Blackburn. 

The natural seriousness of Coligny's mind 
was deepened, the current of his thoughts 
turned toward objects loftier and more grand 
than those of camps and courts, and his 
character moulded for his future career as 
champion of the truth by the influence of 
his first wife, the beautiful and accomplished 
Charlotte de Laval, who was a daughter of 
Christ and the Reformation. His military 
genius was stimulated and fed by its prompt 
and emphatic recognition on the part of 
the king. " For your bravery everywhere/' 
said the monarch to Coligny, "your superior 
discipline and your meritorious services at 
Cerisole and Boulogne, I confer upon you 



150 PBESB YTERIANIS3L 

another rank of knighthood, the collar of 
my order, that of St. Michael ;" and he soon 
added, "I appoint you colonel-general of 
the French infantry." In 1552 he was 
made by the king admiral of France. 

But a yet higher promotion awaited him 
from the lip of the Captain of our salva- 
tion, and this through defeat, imprison- 
ment and prostration on a bed of sickness. 
Philip II., with a vast and well-appointed 
army, was about to attack St. Quentin, and 
having taken this place, to advance on Paris. 
St. Quentin, a frontier town of Picardy, 
eighty-seven miles north-east from Paris, 
stood on a hill which sloped down to the 
river Somme. Around it was a broad ditch, 
and on three sides a marsh. Coligny deter- 
mined to throw himself and his forces into 
the city. Between it and him lay the foe. 
His officers protested ; Coligny persisted. 
With some seven hundred soldiers he out- 
stripped the rest, cut his way through all 
opposition, and at midnight put the walls 
of the city between him and the besiegers, 



THE CHAMPIONS. 151 

who at once swarmed around the city. He 
found the city walls tottering, its towers 
almost defenceless, with but little ammuni- 
tion and some fifty muskets half fit for use. 
The scanty supply of provisions was hus- 
banded. The women and children were 
shut up in the churches. The battle was 
fought under the walls, and lost, terribly 
lost. Coligny, surrounded by about eight 
hundred soldiers, saw from his watchtower 
the ruin of the French. In one hour the 
field was covered with the flower of the 
French soldiery and nobility weltering in 
their blood. Knowing, however, that by 
holding out he might detain the victors a 
while before its walls, and thus give Paris 
a breathing-time, instead of surrendering, 
he gathered the people and made them take 
an oath to behead the first man who should 
propose to surrender. He himself took the 
oath, pledging them his head if any of them 
should hear him speak the word surrender. 
For seventeen days the little band resisted, 
till, through eleven breaches made in the 



1 52 PEESB YTERIANISM. 

crazy walls by the cannonade, the foes 
swarmed in upon them. Coligny rushed 
into the thickest of the fight, and was taken 
wounded, but fighting hand to hand, and 
sent to prison. He lost St. Quentin, but 
saved France. And, more, himself was 
saved with great salvation. In prison he 
fell sick. During his convalescence he 
called for a Bible. On its pages he hung 
as a child on the words of a mother. God's 
words were found and he did eat them, and 
those words were to him the joy and rejoi- 
cing of his heart. His brother sent him 
books and opened the way for a correspond- 
ence with Calvin, who wrote to him, "I 
have heard that our heavenly Father hath 
so fortified you by the power of his Spirit 
that I should rather praise him for his 
kindness than urge you to greater efforts." 
Coligny was released from prison on pay- 
ing a ransom. Resigning the government 
of Paris and the Isle of France, he sat 
down at the feet of his Christian wife for 
instruction in the deeper things of heart 



THE CHAMPIONS. 153 

religion. One evening as lie and she were 
gazing upon the starry heavens she said 
to him, 

"How wonderful that you should have 
been so blest in your captivity !" 

" Would you encourage me to remain 
firm, whatever might happen ?" 

" Indeed, I would," replied his helpmeet ; 
"for though the trial of seeing you in prison 
for your faith would crush me, I would rather 
be crushed to nothing a thousand times than 
have you deny Christ." 

"Enough. It was only for your sake 
that I thought of these terrors. As for 
myself, I have dwelt upon the joys of relig- 
ion. What a delight to have a family altar, 
a chaplain in our castle, a church growing 
up in our town and a gospel preached to 
the poor !" 

"And the joys beyond these," she an- 
swered, " the glories of the eternal heavens !" 

Time rolled on. The kingdom was half 
Huguenot, this half embracing three-fourths 
of the men of letters. "Give me," said 



154 PBESB YTERIANISJL 

Catherine to the admiral, "a list of your 
Protestant churches." He gave her a list 
of two thousand one hundred and fifty 
organized under regular pastors, besides 
many flocks of sheep without a shepherd. 
" How many troops can you raise ?" she 
asked. " As many thousands as you wish," 
he answered. 

Coligny had reformed his own family, 
had become the advocate of the Reforma- 
tion in the realm, had presented the first 
example of godliness to the nobility of 
France when they were sunk in evil and 
immorality, and when wars arose he was 
made the Huguenot lieutenant-general. 

This now was the man that filled the 
championship of the Church in France in 
1572, and confronting him on the side of 
the papacy were the Guises and Catherine 
de Medici. 

5. Like contrast of character meets us in 
passing from France into the Netherlands 
in the persons of Alva and William the 
Silent. 



THE CHAMPIONS. 155 

The ancestors of William had for six hun- 
dred years been sovereigns of the duchy 
of Nassau, a patch of territory about half 
as large as the State of Rhode Island. His 
mother, Juliana, was a devoted Christian. 
His father was a true Protestant. Look at 
him as set before us by the graphic pen- 
cil of Motley : A Spanish cast of features, 
dark, well chiseled and symmetrical; his 
head small and well placed upon his shoul- 
ders ; his hair dark brown, as were also his 
moustache and peaked beard ; his forehead 
lofty, spacious, and already in 1555, when 
he was only twenty-two years old, prema- 
turely engraved with the anxious lines of 
thought; his eyes full, brown, well opened 
and expressive of profound reflection. He 
dressed in the magnificent apparel for which 
the Netherlands were celebrated above all 
other nations. 

We thus see him as Charles V. leaned 
upon him in the memorable scene of the 
abdication — that Charles who had put out 
of the world in various persecutions more 



156 PRESBYTERIANIS3L 

than one thousand a year for every one of 
the fifty-five years of his life thus far — the 
princely page and the imperial persecutor. 

It was a grand and most imposing scene. 
It was at Brussels, in the great hall of the 
ducal palace, October 25, 1555. The hall 
was hung with tapestry and festooned with 
flowers. At one end, under a royal canopy, 
was a platform, and upon it three gilded 
chairs. A vast and gorgeously-appareled 
assembly filled the hall. The clock has 
struck three. Charles enters leaning on 
William. He ascends the platform and 
seats himself in the central one of the three 
gilded chairs. He rises, leans on William 
and delivers his address of abdication. Thus 
the Netherlands passes into the grasp of 
the terrible Philip II. 

In the providence of God, William is 
thrown into close connection with another 
tool of papal tyranny, Henry II. of France. 
The war between France and Spain closes 
in 1559 with the treaty of "Cateau-Cam- 
bresis," by the terms of which four nobles 




William of Orange. 



THE CHAMPIONS. 157 

become hostages at the court of France. 
One of these four is William of Orange. 
King Henry is fond of the company of the 
handsome young prince. They go out to 
hunt in the woods of Vincennes. The- 
king and the prince are alone together. 
The king has a grand project on his mind. 
He is communicative. William listens. 
"You know," says the king, "that heresy 
is increasing at a frightful rate in my realms 
and in Spain, and it may be in all the world. 
My conscience will never be easy nor my 
throne secure till I have rid my kingdom 
of these vermin. The king of Spain feels 
with me in this matter. We are now 
united, and we have resolved, by the bless- 
ing of Heaven, to blot out the very name of 
Protestants from our dominions." Philip 
in the Netherlands and Henry in France 
were soon to quench heresy in the blood of 
its abettors. Fine news this for the ears 
of the young Netherlander, the son of heret- 
ical parents ! But he does not remonstrate, 
for it is William the Silent who is listen- 



158 rRESBTTERIANISM. 

ing. But profoundly does lie ponder the 
details of the fiendish plot. One lesson for 
the future champion of the truth of God ! 

A few days after this William requests 
leave to visit the Netherlands, and there 
uses all his influence with the authorities 
to have the Spanish troops, who were to 
have been the instruments in the work of 
death, removed from the country. 

In 1567 a threatening insurrection broke 
out in Antwerp. Fifteen thousand Dutch 
Huguenots flew to arms. There was fierce 
talk of repaying Catholic oppression by 
pillaging their dwellings and churches. 
William saw nothing but disaster in the 
movement. He persuaded the Lutherans 
to take no part in the matter. Then he 
rode into the midst of the infuriated Hu- 
guenots, and by his eloquence and weight 
of character induced them to lay down their 
arms and disband. "But for his courage 
and prudence on this occasion millions of 
money and multitudes of human lives had 
been sacrificed." 



THE CHAMPIONS. 159 

Later in this year William withdrew with 
his family to Dillenburg, the ancestral seat 
of his family in Germany ; tyranny had 
become too strong, and he preferred exile 
to slavery. Up to this time he had been 
nominally a Romanist, but his kindly nature 
revolted at papal cruelty, and papal power 
was now to crush all freedom, civil and 
religious. Now the bloody scheme whis- 
pered in his ear by the king of France 
in the forest of Vincennes was to be car- 
ried into execution. Here at Dillenburg he 
was led to deeper meditations on the nature 
of true religion. Here he became a pupil 
of the Holy Ghost. " It was about this 
time," writes Motley, " that a deep change 
came over his mind. Hitherto his course 
of life and habits of mind had not led him 
to deal very earnestly with things beyond 
the orld. The severe duties and the grave 
character of the cause to which his days 
were henceforth to be devoted had already 
led him to a closer inspection of the essen- 
tial attributes of Christianity. He was now 



160 PBESBYTERIANISM. 

enrolled for life as a soldier of the Refor- 
mation. The Reformation was henceforth 
his fatherland, the sphere of his duty and 
his affection. The religious Reformers 
became his brethren, whether in France, 
Germany, the Netherlands or England. 

"Hitherto he had been a man of the 
world and a statesman, but from this time 
forth he began calmly to rely upon God's 
providence in all the emergencies of life. 
His letters written to his most confidential 
friends, to be read only by themselves, and 
which have been gazed upon by no other 
eyes until after the lapse of nearly three 
centuries, abundantly prove his sincere and 
simple trust." 

6. Face to face with this grand character 
in the fierce conflict of 1572 we find Fer- 
nando Alvarez de Toledo, duke of Alva. 

Alva, " tall, thin, erect, with small head, 
long visage, lean yellow cheek, dark twink- 
ling eyes, adust complexion, black, bristling 
hair and a long, sable, silvered beard de- 
scending in two wavy streams upon his 



THE CHAMPIONS. 161 

breast. He did not combine a great 
variety of vices, but tliose be bad were 
colossal, and be possessed no virtues. He 
was neither lustful nor intemperate, but bis 
professed eulogists admitted bis enormous 
avarice, while the world has agreed that 
such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of 
patient vindictiveness and universal blood- 
thirstiness, were never found in a savage 
beast of the forest and but rarely in a 
human bosom." 

As a soldier he was inferior to no general 
of his age. As a disciplinarian he was 
second not even to Coligny. " He was 
more audacious, more inventive, more des- 
perate, than all the commanders of that or 
any other age. 

" As a financier he exhibited a wonderful 
ignorance of the first principles of political 
economy. No man before ever gravely 
proposed to establish confiscation as a per- 
manent source of revenue to the State, yet 
the annual product of the escheated prop- 
erty of slaughtered heretics was regularly 



162 PRESB TTEB I A NISM. 

relied upon during his administration to 
replenish the king's treasury. 

"As an administrator of civil and judi- 
cial affairs of the country, Alva at once 
reduced its institutions to a frightful sim- 
plicity. In place of the ancient laws of 
"which the Netherlands were so proud, he 
substituted the Blood Council. This tribu- 
nal was even more arbitrary than the Inqui- 
sition. Never was a simpler apparatus for 
tyranny devised than this great labor-saving 
machine. Never was so great a quantity 
of murder and robbery achieved with such 
despatch and regularity. Sentences, exe- 
cutions and confiscations to an incredible 
extent were turned out daily with appalling 
precision. 

" No mode in which human beings have 
ever caused their fellow-creatures to suffer 
was omitted from daily practice. Men, 
women and children, old and young, nobles 
and paupers, opulent burghers, hospital 
patients, lunatics, dead bodies, — all were in- 
discriminately made to furnish food for the 



THE CHAMPIONS. 163 

scaffold and the stake. Men were tortured, 
beheaded, hanged by the neck and by the 
legs, burned before slow fires, pinched to 
death with red-hot tongs, broken upon the 
wheel, starved and flayed alive. Their 
skins, stripped from the living body, were 
stretched upon drums to be beaten in the 
march of their brethren to the gallows. 
The bodies of many who had died a natu- 
ral death were exhumed and their festering 
remains hanged upon the gibbet, on pretext 
that they had died without receiving the 
sacrament. Women and children were 
executed for the crime of assisting their 
fugitive husbands and parents with a penny 
in their utmost need." 

In 1572 this man is sixty-four years old. 
For four years he has filled the office of 
governor-general of the Netherlands. For 
forty-five years he has waded through blood. 
In six years he has ordered to death eigh- 
teen thousand six hundred human beings. 

Well may Motley add that " the character 
of the duke of Alva, so far as the Nether- 



1 64 PRESB VTERTA XISM. 

lands arc concerned, seems almost like a 
caricature. As a creation of fiction it would 
seem grotesque." This is the champion of 
the pope that in the Netherlands stood face 
to face with the large-hearted, tender- 
hearted Dutch Huguenot, William the 
Silent, in the great conflict three hundred 
years ago ! 

But Alva was only the tool — the right 
willing tool indeed — of another far away, 
whose mandates he most scrupulously 
obeyed — Philip II. of Spain. 

7. Philip II. in person was "a small, 
meagre man, much below the middle height, 
with thin legs, narrow chest, and the shrink- 
ing, timid air of a habitual invalid." One 
of his eulogists writes of him, " His body 
was but a human cage in which, however 
brief and narrow, dwelt a soul to whose 
flight the immeasurable expanse of heaven 
was too contracted." He was in person 
greatly like his father, "the same broad 
forehead and blue eye, the same aquiline 
but better proportioned nose. In the lower 



THE CHAMPIONS. 165 

part of the countenance the remarkable 
Burgundian deformity was likewise repro- 
duced. He had the same heavy, hanging 
lip, with a vast mouth and monstrously 
protruding lower jaw. His complexion was 
fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yel- 
low, short and pointed. He looked habitu- 
ally on the ground when he conversed, was 
chary of speech, embarrassed and even 
suffering in manner/ 7 In talents he was 
below mediocrity. " His mind was incred- 
ibly small." 

How he stood affected toward the cause 
of truth may be learned in one character- 
istic incident in his life. It was the 18th 
of October, 1559. Philip had just arrived 
at Valladolid from the Netherlands. There 
were in the hands of the holy Mother 
Church thirteen heretics ready for sacri- 
fice. In the great square was a huge pile 
of combustibles ready to be lighted. Pres- 
ent there were the king, his sister, his son, 
the high officers of the State, the foreign 
ministers and all the nobility of the king- 



166 PRESB YTERIANISM. 

dora, together with an immense concourse 
of soldiers, clergy and people. A sermon 
was preached by the bishop of Cuenc,a, on 
what text we know not. At the close the 
inquisitor-general, Valdez, cried with a 
loud voice, 

" O God, make speed to help us !" 
Philip drew his sword. Then Valdez : 
"Your Majesty swears by the cross of 
the sword whereon your royal hand reposes 
that you will give all necessary favor to 
the Holy Office of the Inquisition against 
heretics, apostates and those who favor them, 
and will denounce and inform against all 
those who, to your royal knowledge, shall 
act or speak against the faith." 
The king answered, 
" I swear," and signed the paper. 
The fire was then kindled and the thir- 
teen sufferers consumed. One said to the 
king, " How can you thus look on and per- 
mit me to be burned ?" The king answered, 
" I would carry the wood to burn my own 
son were he as wicked as you." 



THE CHAMPIONS. 167 

These were the leaders in the Nether- 
lands three hundred years ago — Philip II., 
Alva and William the Silent. 

8. In England the one prominent figure 
is Queen Elizabeth. 

As already remarked, the Reformation 
in England sprang from the hearts of the 
masses of the people, instructed from the 
Bible by their pastors and by the Spirit of 
God. For the great cause there no Luthers, 
Zwingles, Calvins, Colignys or Williams 
appeared. On the part of the Reformers 
were students here, writers of pamphlets 
there, and everywhere the hidden, hunted 
Christian people. 

In opposition to these stood the queen of 
the realm. Elizabeth seems to have been 
an unhappy compromise between too little 
and too much. She possessed talents too 
large to allow her to resign herself and the 
government into the hands of her ministers, 
and too small to enable her to govern with- 
out them. Thus all their schemes were 
complicated with this unmanageable ele- 



168 PBESBYTEBIANI8M. 

ment, the queen's fancies and will. Change- 
ful as the weather, irascible and petulant, 
she was to her ministers very much what a 

pet porcupine might be to a delicate lady. 
JSke was too shrewd to be largely or Ions: 
deceived, yet schemes of the most delicate 
character and of momentous interest often 
had their fate bound up in a successful 
management of her caprices. Intensely 
self-willed, her one idol was the royal pre- 
rogative. Whatever she did in spite of 
the advice or with the consent of her min- 
isters was dictated by its bearing on her 
prerogative. "She understood her prero- 
gative, which was as dear to her as her 
crown or her life, but she understood noth- 
ing of the rights of conscience in matters 
of religion, and like the absurd king, her 
father, she would have no opinion in relig- 
ion acknowledged, at least, but her own." 

Destitute of conscience herself, how could 
she care for conscience in others ? Charles I. 
lost his head for an arbitrariness of despot- 
ism no more flagrant than that of Queen 



THE CHAMPIONS. 169 

Elizabeth. Outstripping all legal enact- 
ment other than her own will, she, in 1567, 
sent her agents into the parishes, and gave 
orders that if the people neglected attend- 
ance upon the parish churches and fre- 
quented conventicles they should for the 
first offence be deprived of their freedom 
of the city of London, and after that be 
punished according as she should order. 
When Archbishop Grindal, who had gone 
to cruel lengths in enforcing the queen's 
mandates, at length hesitated and drew back, 
she was so enraged that by an order from 
the Star Chamber she confined him imme- 
diately to his house and kept him for six 
months from the exercise of his official 
duties. 

With her Parliament she dealt just as 
summarily as with individuals. When 
motion was made in the House of Commons 
for an address to her Majesty, asking the 
release of certain members of the House 
from prison, the answer w r as, "that the 
House must not call her to account for what 



170 PBESBYTERIANISM. 

she did of her royal authority ; that she did 
not like to be questioned, nor did it become 
the House to deal in such matters." 

When Mr. Attorney Morrice moved to 
inquire into certain proceedings of her 
bishops, and the members proceeded to the 
discussion of the motion, this imperious 
woman sent for the Speaker, and bade him 
tell his fellow-legislators that this Parlia- 
ment was called merely to enact sharp laws, 
to compel neglecters of her church service 
to attend upon it ; that it was not meant that 
they should meddle with matters of State 
or causes ecclesiastical ; that she was highly 
offended ; that it was her royal pleasure that 
no bill touching any matters of State and 
causes ecclesiastical should be presented in 
the House. At the same time, Mr. Attorney 
Morrice was seized by the sergeant-at-arms, 
" discharged from his office in the court of 
the duchy of Lancaster, disabled from the 
practice of barrister-at-law, and kept for some 
years prisoner in Tutbury Castle." Thus in 
theory, and largely in fact, the government 






THE CHAMPIONS. 171 

during this reign, lords, commons, legisla- 
ture, executive and judiciary, consisted of 
one strong-minded woman. 

As to theoretical religion, she was more a 
papist than a Protestant, and more an unbe- 
liever than either. A formal papist her 
political situation forbade her to be ; how 
could this female Henry VIII. submit to 
the pope in opposition to her predecessor, 
the male Henry VIII., her own father? 
Besides, her great men and a vast mass of 
her citizens would have interfered even at 
the expense of a revolution. On the other 
hand, if she hated Satan worse than she 
hated Puritanism, and especially Presbyte- 
rian Puritanism, the evil one was pretty 
well hated. The lord treasurer in the 
Star Chamber said, " The queen cannot sat- 
isfy her conscience without crushing the 
Puritans ; she thought none of her subjects 
worthy of protection that favored innova- 
tions, or that directly or indirectly counte- 
nanced the alteration of anything established 
in the Church." Now, as the things estab- 



1 72 PRESJB YTERIAXISM. 

lished in the Church were her own arbitrary 
decrees, it is evident that, in 1572, England 
not only still had a pope, but already an 
infallible one. 

Such being her theoretic notions about 
religion, no wonder if her personal piety 
was of a sort quite other than that enjoined 
in the New Testament. Indeed, in her pas- 
sionate moods — and she not infrequently 
gave way to towering wrath — she could 
on occasion be as profane as any sailor in 
the royal navy. On a question between 
Bishops Ely and Cox this pious queen wrote 
to the latter in this mild strain : " Proud 
prelate, you know what you were before I 
made you what you are. If you do not 

immediately comply, by I will unfrock 

you !" It seems, then, that the bishop wore 
the frock and Queen Bess the trousers. 

And yet she was distinguished by some 
very unmanly traits. " Her vanity,'' writes 
Froude, " was as insatiable as it was com- 
monplace. No flattery was too tawdry to 
find a welcome with her; and as she had no 



THE CHAMPIONS. 173 

repugnance to false words in others, she was 
equally liberal of them herself. Her entire 
nature was saturated with artifice. Except 
when speaking some round untruth, Eliza- 
beth never could be simple. Her letters 
and her speeches were as fantastic as her 
dress, and her meaning as involved as her 
policy. She was unnatural even in her 
prayers, and she carried her affectations 
even into the presence of the Almighty." 

To " gainstand," as Knox would say, this 
compound of imperious bigotry, impiety 
and overweening vanity, with her intense 
hatred of Puritanism, there were in Eng- 
land in 1572 only the great body of Bible 
students and the believers, some learned, 
many ignorant, some noble, many obscure, 
some wealthy, many very poor, praying in 
secret, stealing into conventicles, worshiping 
God in Jesus Christ with the sword ever 
gleaming in the air close to their heads. 

9. In Scotland, in 1572, two towering 
champions confront each other — John Knox 
and the earl of Iforton. There were not 



1 74 PRESB YTERTANISM. 

wanting others of power and skill on either 
side, but without doubt these two were then 
the leaders in the field. 

James Douglas, earl of Morton, had been 
one of the " lords of the congregation" who 
with others had signed the "First Cove- 
nant," pledging his life and substance to 
" the setting forward of the blessed word of 
God and his congregation." But having 
received considerable favors of the queen- 
regent Mary of Guise, the mother of Mary, 
afterward queen of Scots, he for a while 
vacillated between the contending parties, 
and seemed to be, as Sadler, the English 
envoy at the time, describes him, " a simple, 
fearful man." 

At the death of the queen-regent, how- 
ever, Morton emerged from this state of 
duplicity into the man he really was — bold, 
decided, self-willed and utterly unscrupu- 
lous. He was distinguished for licentious- 
ness in his private life, for ability, avarice, 
rapacity and entire want of moral principle. 
Cognizant of the plot for the murder of 



THE CHAMPIONS. 175 

Darnley by Bothwell, he, though refusing 
to take part in it, yet gave no information 
whereby the crime might have been pre- 
vented ; and when the deed was done, he was 
among those who subscribed a bond to pro- 
tect Bothwell from the legal consequence of 
his crime, and he used every endeavor to 
secure the marriage of Mary with her mur- 
der-stained paramour. By his misconduct 
in public and private life he made himself 
so generally odious that when at length he 
was arrested, condemned to death and exe- 
cuted, there were few to mourn for him. 
The Catholics hated him for the part he 
had taken as a nominal Protestant, the 
Protestants for his want of principle, his 
vileness of character, and for the sore inju- 
ries he had inflicted upon the Kirk. He 
died, however, with a calm, undaunted spirit. 
10. Face to face with this bad man stood 
one at length acknowledged almost by 
unanimous consent as from sandal to tur- 
ban a true man, if there ever was one — 
John Knox. 



176 PRJSSB YTER1ANISM. 

On the coast of Fifeshire, some forty 
miles north-east from Edinburgh, on a 
small bay, the visitor finds the ruins of the 
old castle of St. Andrew's. There they 
show the tourist the horrid old " Bottle 
Dungeon." It is cut out of the living rock, 
one side of which is washed by the ever- 
restless sea. The opening -in the top is 
circular and about seven feet in diameter. 
Below, it widens to twenty-five feet, and is 
of about the same depth. Down into this 
granite bottle the victim was lowered by a 
windlass, and there left to pine and starve, 
or to await the hour of execution. In im- 
agination one may still hear the sighing 
of the prisoner and the moaning of those 
appointed to die. In an old tottering relic 
of the western wall of the castle they point 
still to the window out of which Beaton 
gazed in such content upon the burning 
Wish art, and out of which so soon he him- 
self hung a ghastly corpse. 

It was in this old castle that Knox, soon 
after the murder of Wishart, began to preach 



THE CHAMPIONS. 177 

the gospel of the kingdom, and from this 
time till his death his name and character 
and personal influence were the life and soul 
of the Reformation in Scotland. Richly- 
endowed with mental power, and with keen 
insight both of men and of the nature of 
the service to which the hour bade him, he 
was a true son of Issachar, with understand- 
ing of the times to know what Israel ought 
to do. Not even the sages of our American 
Revolution saw more clearly into the true 
relations between subject and sovereign than 
did this rough, vigorous Scotchman. In 
one of those noted interviews with Mary, 
the latter spitefully asked him, " Think you 
that subjects having the power may resist 
their princes ?" 

To this the Reformer answered, " If 
princes exceed their bounds, madam, no 
doubt they may be resisted even by power. 
For no greater honor or greater obedience 
is to be given to kings or princes than 
God has ordained to be given to father or 
mother. But the father may be struck 



178 PRESBYTERTANISM. 

with a frenzy in which he would slay his 
children. Now, madam, if the children 
arise, join together, apprehend the father, 
take the sword from him, bind his hands 
and keep him in prison till the frenzy be 
over, think you, madam, that the children 
do any wrong ? Even so, madam, is it with 
princes that would murder the children of 
God that are subject unto them. Their 
blind zeal is nothing but a mad frenzy, 
therefore, to take the sword from them, to 
bind their hands and to cast them into 
prison till they be brought to a more sober 
mind, is no disobedience against princes, but 
just obedience, because it agreeth with the 
will of God." 

" Thus spoke Calvinism," writes Froude, 
"the creed of republics in its first hard 
form." 

Of this man this elegant and learned his- 
torian thus further speaks : 

"John Knox became the representative 
of all that was best in Scotland. He was 
no narrow fanatic who in a world in which 



THE CHAMPIONS. 179 

God's grace was equally visible in a thou- 
sand creeds could see truth and goodness 
nowhere but in his own formula. He was 
a large, noble, generous man, with a shrewd 
perception of actual fact, who found him- 
self face to face with a system of hideous 
iniquity. He believed himself a prophet 
with a direct commission from Heaven to 
overthrow it. 

"Such was Knox, the greatest living 
Scotchman. The full measure of Knox's 
greatness no man in his day could estimate. 
No grander figure can be found in the 
entire history of the Reformation in this 
island. Cromwell and Burghley rank be- 
side him for the work which they effected, 
but as politicians and statesmen they had to 
labor with instruments which they soiled 
their hands in touching. In priority, in 
uprightness, in courage, truth and stainless 
honor, the regent Murray and our English 
Latimer were perhaps his equals, but Mur- 
ray was intellectually far below him, and 
the sphere of Latimer's influence was on a 



180 rBFSB YTEM TA XISM. 

smaller scale. The time lias come when 
English history may do justice to one but 
for whom the Reformation would have been 
overthrown among ourselves, for the spirit 
Knox created saved Scotland ; and if Scot- 
land had been Catholic again, neither the 
wisdom of Elizabeth's ministers, nor the 
teaching of her bishops, nor her own chica- 
neries, would have preserved England from 
revolution." 

Of Knox the quaint Carlyle writes : " It 
seems hard measure that this Scottish man 
now should have to plead like - a culprit 
before the world intrinsically for having 
been, in such a way as it was then possible 
to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen. Had 
he been a poor half-and-half, he could have 
crouched into a corner, like so many others. 
Scotland had not been delivered and Knox 
had been without blame. He is the one 
Scotchman to whom of all others his coun- 
try and the world owe a debt. He has to 
plead that Scotland would forgive him for 
having been worth to it any million of 



THE CHAMPIONS. 181 

unblamable Scotchmen that need no for- 
giveness. He bared his breast to battle, 
had to row in French galleys, wander for- 
lorn in evils, in clouds and storms, was cen- 
sured, shot at through his windows, had a 
right sore fighting life ; if this world were 
his recompense, he had made but a bad 
venture of it." 

11. Knox stood not alone indeed in Scot- 
land in this memorable year. There were 
others on his side of whom the world was 
not worthy. Among these was a young man, 
twenty-seven years old this year, and an 
honor to the cause and his race. This was 
Andrew Melville. Weak in body, he was 
anything but weak in intellect and courage. 
He was distinguished as an Oriental scholar, 
familiar with law, and with the great prin- 
ciples of civil government. Master of a 
strong voice, a fluent elocution, a cogent, 
incisive diction, of great dialectic skill and 
of ardent spirit, he could so utter what he 
knew as not only to leave his hearers in no 
doubt as to his meaning, but also to work 



182 PBESB YTERIANESM. 

conviction in even unwilling and prejudiced 
minds. His tone of spirit is shown in many 
a sparkling incident. 

On one occasion, when a committee from 
the General Assembly, headed by Mel- 
ville, waited on Morton as regent, the latter 
said that — 

" The General Assembly was a convoca- 
tion of the king's subjects, and that it was 
treasonable for them to meet without the 
king's permission." 

" If this be so," answered Melville, " then 
Christ and his apostles must have been 
guilty of treason, for they called together 
great multitudes without asking permission 
of the magistrates." 

Biting the head of his staff, Morton 
"growled in that deep undertone which 
marked his occasional fits of cold, ruthless 
anger :" 

"There will never be quietness in this 
country till half a dozen of you be hanged 
or banished !" 

" Tush, sir !" replied Melville ; " threaten 



THE CHAMPIONS. 183 

your courtiers after that manner. It is the 
same to me whether I rot in the air or in 
the ground. The earth is the Lord's. I 
have been ready to give my life where it 
would not be half so well expended. Let 
God be glorified; it will not be in your 
power to hang or exile his truth." 

No, Knox was not alone. There was 
Melville, and there were others with him. 
Nevertheless, the one towering form on the 
side of truth in Scotland in 1572 was that 
of John Knox. 

There, then, is the wide field of conflict, 
reaching from Scotland to Piedmont, and 
there stand the great champions before us — 
the pope yonder, Queen Elizabeth here, 
between them Catherine and Coligny, Wil- 
liam and Alva, Knox and Morton. 

It only remains to glance at certain inci- 
dents in the actual conflict. 



IV. 

THE CONFLICT. 
1. SCOTLAND. 

TN Scotland, in 1572, a war was waged 
with an earnestness and zeal that became 
the importance of the interests at stake. 
Romanism was pretty thoroughly paralyzed, 
but in the bosom of the Reform itself 
worldly and wicked statecraft was doing 
its utmost to hinder, hamper, cripple, cor- 
rupt and despoil the Church. 

At the opening of this memorable and in 
many respects disastrous year, James VI. 
of Scotland, the son of Mary queen of 
Scots and the wretched Darnley, was eight 
years old. Mary, his mother, was prisoner 
in the grasp of Elizabeth, and the earl of 
Mar, weak rather than wicked, was regent. 

The parties in the contest then waged 
were the Church on the one hand and a 

184 



THE CONFLICT IN SCOTLAND. 185 

worldly, grasping court on the other, Knox 
leading the one, Morton the other. The 
question in controversy was the disposal 
of the Church revenues. The Reforma- 
tion found the Church in possession of a 
large amount of property and a rich reve- 
nue flowing in therefrom. The Protestant 
nobility had cordially consented to and 
assisted in the abolition of papal jurisdic- 
tion ; now the decision was to be made as to 
the disposal of these revenues. The de- 
mand of Knox and his party was that, while 
a certain portion might be allowed to the 
Romish bishops, abbots, priors and the 
like during their lifetime, the rest, and at 
the death of these incumbents their income 
also, should be appropriated, one portion to 
the support of the poor, another to educa- 
tional institutions and a third to the sup- 
port of the. clergy. But the nobles looked 
with greedy eye upon these treasures, and 
under the lead of Morton plotted and 
schemed to direct the golden streams into 
their own coffers. 



186 FBESB YTERIANISM. 

Accordingly, on the death of the popish 
archbishop of St. Andrew's, Morton ob- 
tained a grant from the privy council 
empowering him to dispose of the arch- 
bishopric and its revenue. Not daring, 
however, formally to hold the benefice in 
his own hands, he induced John Douglas, 
the rector of the University of St. Andrew's, 
to take the office and title, with the under- 
standing that Morton was to have the lion's 
share of the income. Douglas, as arch- 
bishop, had also a seat in Parliament. 
Thus the way was open for the infliction 
upon the Church of a set of ungodly offi- 
cers whose titles and duties were alike 
disallowed by Presbyterians, and for the 
diversion of the ecclesiastical revenues into 
avaricious hands. 

Against this j>lan Knox loudly exclaimed, 
and the General Assembly sent a remon- 
strance to Parliament, denouncing the 
scheme, protesting against Douglas taking 
a seat in that body as lord-bishop, and 
threatening Douglas with excommunica- 



THE CONFLICT IN SCOTLAND. 187 

tion. Morton's influence, however, pre- 
vailed. Through the influence of the 
Church the tithe-collectors of St. Andrew's 
refused to pay the money into the hands 
of Douglas. Then Morton secured a man- 
date from the regent forbidding their col- 
lection of these tithes. Erskine of Dun, 
however, prevailed with the regent to an- 
nul this prohibition. In his remonstrance 
upon this point Erskine deplores the " great 
disorder used in Stirling in the last Parlia- 
ment in creating bishops, placing them in 
Parliament and giving them a vote in that 
body, in despite of the Kirk, and in high 
contempt of God, the Kirk opposing her- 
self to that disorder." 

But Morton was not to be baffled. That 
golden prize was too precious to be lost if 
there were any way to grasp it. The Kirk 
must be entrapped into the scheme. Ac- 
cordingly, in January, 1572, an irregular 
and unauthorized convention of the super- 
intendents and certain ministers assembled 
at Leith for consultation. Mistaking its own 



188 l *BESB YTERIAmSM. 

powers, tins body appointed a committee to 
confer with the privy council, and agreed to 
ratify the conclusions they might reach in 
accordance with certain instructions. The 
result was a joint committee of six ministers 
and six of the council to settle affairs of 
national importance between Church and 
State. This abnormal, unauthorized com- 
mittee agreed to the subtle scheme for set- 
ting up Mortonism in the Church, by 
which, under unlawful ecclesiastical forms, 
the patrimony of the Church might feed 
the greed of avaricious lords. 

According to this scheme, the titles of 
archbishop and bishop were to remain, as 
also the bounds of the old popish dioceses, 
until the majority of the king (he was now 
eight years old) or until Parliament should 
determine in the matter, these dignitaries 
to be chosen by an assembly of learned 
ministers, to have like jurisdiction with the 
superintendents and to be subject to the 
General Assembly in spiritual and to the 
king in secular matters. Like arrangements 



THE CONFLICT IN SCOTLAND. 189 

were made respecting abbacies, priories and 
the rest, and the holders of the larger bene- 
fices to have place in Parliament. 

Morton was victor. Ambitious ecclesi- 
astics would now fill the offices, draw the 
revenues and pay over the chief share to 
the patrons through whose influence they 
found way into their high places. 

The scheme soon received from the wits 
of the day the contemptuous name of Tul- 
chanism. In the Highlands it was not 
uncommon to deceive refractory cows into 
giving their milk by stuffing the skin of 
a departed calf with straw and placing it 
beside the cow as her own offspring, and 
now the milkmaid had little difficulty in 
safely filling her pail. The name of this 
surreptitious calf was Tulchan. No sooner 
did the popular mind comprehend this new 
procedure than it saw in the diocese the 
cow, in the bishop the stuffed calf and in 
the patron the one who secured the milk. 
Hence these ecclesiastical tools were called 
Tulchans. 



1 9 PRESB YTEEIANISU. 

Morton's Tulehan, Douglas, vr - first 
ordained and installed archbishop of >:. 
Andrew's, and Knox, being invited by 
Morton to assist in inaugurating Douglas, 
replied by anathematizing both Douglas 
and Morton. 

In August the General Assembly met at 
Perth, and had barely the courage and good 
sense to protest that the Leith arrangement 
should be accepted merely as ad interim 
until further order be obtained from the 
king, regent and nobility. This was bow- 
ing before the storm, and the poor Church 
reaped a sad harvest from this unmanly 
cowardice. 

Two other serious calamities came upon 
the Church — Knox died and Morton, the 
originator of Tulchanism, became regent. 
Mar, worn out with anxiety and toils, passed 
away, and Morton took the helm of the 
tossing, laboring, groaning ship of State. 

But the greatest sorrow of all, as it at the 
same time deprived the Church of her 
Elijah and left in the hands of Ahab a 



THE CONFLICT IN SCOTLAND. 191 

ministry in the main timid and time-serv- 
ing, was the death of Knox. 

Long had he been sighing, " Call for me, 
dear brethren, that God will in his mercy 
please to put an end to my long and pain- 
ful battle. For now, being unable to fight, I 
thirst an end before I be more troublesome 
to the faithful. God is my witness, whom I 
have served in the Spirit, in the gospel of 
the Son of God, that I have had it for my 
only object to instruct the ignorant, to con- 
firm the faithful, to comfort the weak, the 
fearful and the distressed by the promise of 
his grace, and to fight against the proud 
and rebellious by the divine threatenings." 

To Morton he said, " Well, God has beau- 
tified you with many benefits which he has 
not given to every man. And, therefore, 
in the name of God, I charge you to use all 
these benefits aright, and better in time to 
come than ye have done in times by-past. 
If ye shall do so, God shall bless you and 
honor you ; but if ye do not, God shall spoil 
you of these benefits, and your end shall be 



192 rBESB TTERIANISM. 

Ignominy and shame." I wonder if Mor- 
ton thought of these words that day when 
at the old Tolbooth he lay with his neck 
on the block and the grim axe of " the 
maiden" descending upon it? 

A vast concourse attended the funeral of 
Knox ; and looking into his grave, Morton 
said, "There lies one who never feared 
the face of man." At Morton's execution 
his headless trunk lay till sunset of the day 
of his execution on the scaffold, and then, 
" covered with a beggarly cloak," was car- 
ried by common porters to the burial-place 
of criminals, unattended and unwept by 
those who in his prosperity had been his 
professed friends. 

The close of the year 1572 left the poor 
Kirk in Scotland tossed from billow to bil- 
low on a wild, dark sea — Morton carrying- 
it now according to his will with a high 
hand, the General Assembly and the good, 
faithful men paralyzed by their recent 
loss and overawed by the bold, bad regent, 
Morton. 



THE CONFLICT IN ENGLAND. 193 

2. ENGLAND. 

In England the year 1572 was one of 
sore distress among the scourged believers 
in the truth. Over their prostrate forms 
the imperious queen rode in a heavy four- 
wheeled chariot. 

Of the wheels of this chariot, one was 
her Parliament. 

In those palmy days of the divine right 
of monarchs this body was much like a 
school of trembling urchins under the rod 
of a passionate mistress. When, in 1571, 
Strickland moved for further reformation, 
the queen's treasurer reminded him that 
""all matters of ceremonies were to be re- 
ferred to the queen, and that for them to 
meddle with her prerogative was not conve- 
nient." The queen sent for Strickland and 
forbade him the Parliament house. In 
May, 1572, the lord-keeper charged Parlia- 
ment in the queen's name, "See that the 
laws enforcing the discipline and ceremo- 
nies of the Church are put in execution, 



194 PRESS YTERLUHSM. 

see and consider if others be wanting and 
so gladius gladium juvabit ; the civil sword 
will support the ecclesiastical as heforetime 
lias been used." When two bills of Eeform 
had passed the House, the queen sent for 
the Speaker and demanded that the two bills 
be given up to her, and bade the Speaker 
to inform the House that it was her pleas- 
ure that no bills concerning religion should 
henceforth be received unless the same 
should first have been received and ap- 
proved by the bishops or clergy in convo- 
cation. The servile Commons not only 
sent her the bills, but humbly begged that 
she would not conceive an ill opinion of 
the House if she did not approve of them. 
A member who ventured to grumble at this 
treatment was sent to the Tower. 

Another wheel in this heavy chariot was 
the Act of Uniformity. 

This act specified any number of minute 
rules of worship, and, as if this were not 
enough, the clause was added : " The queen 
is hereby empowered, with the advice of 



THE CONFLICT IN ENGLAND. 195 

her commissioners or metropolitan " (the 
advising of Queen Elizabeth by any one 
was not unlike the advising of a wolf by a 
lamb), "to ordain and publish such further 
ceremonies and rites as may be for the ad- 
vancement of God's glory and edifying his 
Church and the reverence of Christ's holy 
mysteries and sacraments." 

Thus in reality one passionate, profane 
woman was constituted dictator in the 
Church of Christ. This act was abun- 
dantly hedged about with penalties. Who- 
ever ventured to address his Maker in any 
other language than that thus prescribed 
was liable to the loss of goods and chattels 
for the first offence, to twelve months' im- 
prisonment for the second, and to confine- 
ment during life for the third. 

The third of these chariot wheels was the 
Court of High Commission. 

The aim of this court was to bring the 
law to bear upon the citizen. The court 
consisted of men, mostly laymen, whose duty 
it was to go through the realm and execute 



196 PBESBYTERIANJSM. 

the laws made way for in the Act of Uni- 
formity. 

The fourth wheel was the court called 
the Star Chamber. It was so called, it is 
said, from the gilt stars that glittered in the 
ceiling of the hall where the court used to 
assemble, the only stars that ever shone 
approvingly on either this body or its deeds. 

This was a court composed of "certain 
noblemen, bishops, judges and counselors 
of the queen's nomination, to the number 
of twenty or thirty, with her Majesty at 
their head, who is the sole judge when pres- 
ent, the other members being only to give 
their opinion." Its determinations were 
simply according to the royal will and 
pleasure, which determinations, however, 
were made binding by act of Parliament. 
This court was a terror to the whole realm. 

With such a queen, so armed and 
equipped for the execution of her one 
bigoted, tyrannous will, what could her 
opposers expect? "Many were cited into 
the spiritual courts, and after long attend- 



THE CONFLICT IN ENGLAND. 197 

ance and great charges were suspended or 
deprived; the messenger of the court was 
paid by the mile ; the fees were exorbitant 
which the prisoner must satisfy before he is 
discharged; the method of proceeding was 
dilatory and vexatious, though they seldom 
called any witnesses to support the charge, 
but usually tendered the defendant an oath 
to answer the interrogatories of the court; 
and if he refused the oath, they examined 
him without it and convicted him upon his 
own confession. If the prisoner was dis- 
missed, he was almost ruined with the costs." 

"If a godly minister," writes one com- 
plainant, "omit but the least ceremony 
for conscience' sake, he is immediately in- 
dicted, deprived, cast into prison and his 
goods wasted and destroyed ; he is kept 
from his wife, and children and at last ex- 
communicated." 

To make sure work throughout the realm, 
there were appointed in every parish four 
or eight censor spies or j urats to take cogni- 
zance of all offences given or taken. These 



198 PBESBYTEEIANISM. 

were under oatli to take particular notice 
of the conformity of the clergy or parish- 
ioners, and to give in their presentments 
when required. So that it was impossible 
for an honest Puritan to escape. 

The result was that many churches in 
London were shut up, and the country was 
plunged into distress. Many persons heard 
no sermon in years. Hundreds of people 
flocked around the church doors, which were 
closed against them, while their pastors 
wandered through the land in poverty and 
their families were reduced to beggary. 
The prisons, too — the horrible, filthy, pesti- 
lential dungeons — were filled to overflowing 
with men, women and children of "whom 
the world was not worthy." 

In December, 1572, this petition was put 
into the hands of the earl of Leicester: 
" We were condemned, according to the Act 
of Uniformity, to one year's imprisonment, 
which we have now suffered patiently, be- 
sides four months' close imprisonment before 
our conviction ; by this means we and 'our 



THE CONFLICT IN ENGLAND. 199 

poor wives and children are utterly impov- 
erished, our health very much imjDaired by 
the unwholesome savor of the place and 
the cold weather, and we are likely to suf- 
fer still greater extremities. We therefore 
humbly beseech your lordship, by the mer- 
cies of God and in consideration of our poor 
wives and children, that you will be a means 
to the most honorable privy council that we 
may be enlarged, or if that cannot be ob- 
tained, that we may be confined in a more 
wholesome prison." Another petition of 
like import was sent to the privy council, 
and another still in the names of the women 
and children. 

Thus was it in "Merrie England" three 
hundred years ago. A profane and heart- 
less queen with her Parliament, Act of 
Uniformity, courts of high commission and 
Star Chamber on the one hand, and on the 
other prisons full of starving, freezing men, 
women and children, sheep of God's pas- 
ture, and all over the land tens of thou- 
sands worshiping God in secret chambers, 



200 FMESB YTErdAXISM. 

where any moment her Majesty's spies like 
hungry wolves might pounce upon them 
and hurry them before relentless, despotic 
courts, and thence to pestilential dungeons. 



3. THE CONTINENT. 

Passing to the Continent, we find the con- 
flict fiercely raging chiefly in France and 
the Netherlands. 

In Germany the moderate and peaceful 
Maximilian II. wore the imperial crown, 
and the empire nestled in religious quietude 
under the broad wings of the "Augsburg 
Concession/' The only sounds of conflict 
which were heard within its borders were 
such as arose from the ordinary warfare 
between truth and error in the preaching 
of the gospel from hundreds of pulpits, and 
from the local struggles between individual 
friends and foes of the word of God. 

In Switzerland, also, the cantons were 
pretty equally parceled out between the 
adherents of Home on the one hand and 



THE CONFLICT ON THE CONTINENT. 201 

the Reformation on the other, and among 
those mountains there dwelt a comparative 
religious peace. 

Over the Waldenses the clouds, big 
with the wrath of St. Bartholomew's Eve, 
extended their black, threatening wings. 
When that horrid massacre took place, 
orders were sent to Biraque, the governor 
of Saluzzo, to slaughter all the Protestants 
within his jurisdiction. Appalled at these 
sanguinary instructions, he called the chap- 
ter together; and while some were heartily 
in favor of proceeding to the work, a major- 
ity insisted that there must be some miscon- 
ception or misrepresentation, and counseled 
delay. This delay saved the poor Wal- 
denses of that province from a horrid doom, 
for the burst of indignant execration that 
thundered through the world against that 
awful deed made even Romanism shrink 
from concentrating upon itself the addi- 
tional odium of this additional crime. 

In November, 1571, the Waldensians of 
the valleys, dreading the sanguinary intol- 



202 rRESBYTERIANISM. 

erance of Castrocaro, governor under the 
duke of Savoy, appointed representatives 
from their various communities to meet 
Bobi, in the valley of Luserne, and renew 
their league for mutual assistance against 
their oppressor. In this convention they 
solemnly pledged themselves that " when any 
one of their churches should be assailed all 
the rest would combine in assertion of their 
common rights ; that no one should adopt 
any measure in such matter without consul- 
tation with the rest ; that they would adhere 
as one man to the union transmitted them 
by their fathers and never abandon their 
religion." 

Strange to say, there is a letter extant 
written to the duke of Savoy, in September, 
1571, by that curious compound of weakness, 
duplicity and villainy, Charles IX. of France, 
in favor of the persecuted Waldenses. 

But when the sounds of the St. Bartholo- 
mew massacre came shrieking and moaning 
through the gaps of the mountains, Cas- 
trocaro, catching the welcome scent of blood, 



THE CONFLICT ON THE CONTINENT. 203 

exclaimed, " Sixty thousand Huguenots have 
perished in France, and do you, miserable 
handful of heretics, think you are to escape !" 
The papists around caught up the watch- 
word, and got ready for another bloody 
revel. The startled Waldenses began to 
prepare for the worst. The women and 
children sought the securest caverns in the 
upper mountains; the men, remaining be- 
hind, prepared their weapons for defence and 
set themselves to watch and pray. 

But the outcry of horror which resound- 
ed through Europe at the assassinations in 
France took effect upon the duke of Savoy, 
nor was his heart untouched by the utter- 
ances of woe from the poor victims. He 
protested against the awful enormity, vowed 
that he would be participant in no such 
crime, and the savage Castrocaro was obliged 
reluctantly to sheath his sword. 

Thus, while the year 1572 was one of ap- 
prehension and sometimes of terror among 
the Waldenses, it was not one in which they 
were called to resist unto blood. 



204 PRESBYTERIANISM. 

4. THE NETHERLANDS. 
In the Netherlands, however, the 

clouds everywhere gathered blackness, and 
the poor Dutch Huguenots were called to 
fresh woes. On the one side was William 
as the champion of the Bible ; on the other, 
Alva as the champion of the Inquisition. 
William was weak, Alva was strong ; Wil- 
liam was mild, Alva was fierce and bloody. 
The story of the conflict of 1572 is a very 
simple one. It was merely aggression and 
merciless slaughter on the one hand, and, 
so far as William's orders prevailed, defence 
on the other. The contrast in spirit be- 
tween the two parties may be seen in these 
two orders : to Diedrich Sonoy, his lieu- 
tenant-governor for North Holland, Wil- 
liam wrote : " See that the word of God is 
preached, without, however, suffering any 
hindrance to the Romish Church in the 
exercise of its religion ; restore the fugi- 
tives and those banished for conscience' sake, 
and require of all magistrates and officers 



THE CONFLICT IN THE NETHERLANDS. 205 

of guilds and brotherhoods an oath of 
fidelity." 

On the other hand, Alva's orders with 
respect to Zutphen, which had offered but a 
feeble resistance to his troops, were, " Leave 
not a single man alive in the city, and burn 
every house to the ground." Just about 
the opening of the year, Alva had sent two 
Italian assassins to England to poison or 
shoot Queen Elizabeth. 

William was now in Germany attempting 
to secure means in men and money to carry 
on the war. But his eye was on, and his 
heart was in, and his influences powerful 
over, the down-trodden, struggling Neth- 
erlands. Brill was suddenly captured by 
Admiral de la Marck, never to be recovered 
by Alva. Flushing, too, was gained by the 
patriots. " The first half of the year 1572 
was distinguished by a series of triumphs, 
rendered still more remarkable by the re- 
verses which followed at its close. Nearly 
all the important cities of Holland and Zea- 
land raised the standard of him whom they 



206 PRESB YTERIAXISM. 

recognized as their deliverer. With one 
fierce bound the nation shook off its chain. 
City after city also in Gelderland, Overys- 
sel and the See of Utrecht, all the import- 
ant towns of Zealand, accepted the garri- 
sons of the prince and formally recognized 
his authority. " In these struggles, during 
William's absence and contrary to his will, 
deeds of terrible ferocity were enacted. The 
estates of Holland met at Dort on the 15th 
of July, elected William's tried friend, Paul 
Bruys, advocate of Holland, and resolved to 
raise the means for prosecuting the work of 
liberation from Alva, Philip and Pome. 

By this assembly the prince was clothed 
with virtually dictatorial powers. Toward 
the end of July, William appeared on the 
field at the head of an army. The dawn of 
a bright day seemed to be gleaming in the 
sky. Coligny wrote him that he had suc- 
ceeded in securing a promise from Charles 
IX. of a strong French reinforcement. But 
all at once, like a thunder-peal from a clear 
sky, came the news of the St. Bartholomew 



THE CONFLICT IN THE NETHERLANDS. 207 

massacre. William was struck down, as he 
said, as with a blow from a sledge-hammer. 
The Spanish army was now besieging Mons, 
and William was just within striking distance 
when the awful news arrived. William was 
beaten and his troops butchered, he himself 
barely escaping capture and death. And 
now over the Netherlands rolled the w T ave 
of reverse and massacre. Mons capitulated. 
The gibbet was set up and an awful butchery 
began, and went on day after day, month 
after month. Mechlin fell, and for three 
days long the city was abandoned to that 
" trinity of furies, murder, lust and rapine, 
under whose promptings human beings be- 
came so much more terrible than the fero- 
cious beasts." Zutphen fell; the whole garri- 
son was put to the sword. The citizens were 
stabbed in the streets, hung on the trees in 
the parks, stripped naked and turned into 
the fields to freeze to death in the cold win- 
ter night. Five hundred were tied two and 
two, back to back, and drowned in the 
Yssel. Many were hung by the feet and 



203 PBESBTTEBIANISM. 

left to die. Naarden fell, and " miracles of 
brutality were accomplished." Nearly the 

whole population, soldiers and citizens, were 
butchered. Men were slain and women 
outraged in the very churches and in the 
streets. Alva wrote : " They have cut the 
throats of the burghers and garrison, and 
have not left a mother's- son alive." 

William escaped from Mods with twenty 
horsemen and repaired to Holland. The 
year closed while the waves of war were 
raging about the walls of the devoted city 
of Harlem. Thus in the Netherlands the 
year opened with sunshine, passed into 
clouds and darkness and closed in blood. 
The condition of God's people during its 
latter months is written in the book of 
inspiration : " They were tortured, not 
accepting deliverance, that they might ob- 
tain a better resurrection : and others had 
trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, 
yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment : 
they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, 
were tempted, were slain with the sword : 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 209 

they wandered about in sheep-skins, and 
goat- skins, being, destitute, afflicted, tor- 
mented (of whom the world was not wor- 
thy) : they wandered in deserts, and in 
mountains, and in dens and caves of the 
earth." 

5. FRANCE. 
In France the year 1572 opened under 
an apparently serene sky, and yet the angels 
saw that sky full of clouds and those clouds 
black with storm and death. The Hugue- 
not population numbered millions, and the 
Huguenot leaders were strong, wise and 
brave. In 1570, under the lead of Coligny, 
they had secured a treaty granting them 
pardon for all past offences, declaring them 
capable of filling all offices, civil and military, 
renewing the edicts for liberty of conscience 
and ceding them for two years, as places of 
refuge and pledges of their security, Ro- 
chelle, La Charite, Montauban and Coignac. 
Thus the civil wars seemed to be ended, and 
the only contests awaiting the faithful those 



210 PJRESB YTEEIANISM. 

which were to be waged by the sword of 
the Spirit. 

Besides this, the king of France had con- 
cluded a defensive alliance with England, 
which promised still greater security to the 
Huguenot cause. In this security there 
seemed to be, on the part of the Protestants, 
profound repose. 

In addition to all this, the king of France 
had offered his sister Margaret in marriage 
to Henry, the young king of Navarre. 
After much hesitation the mother of Henry 
consented and came with her son to Paris, 
where the wedding was to be celebrated. 
She was received with great pomp and cere- 
mony. The Huguenots, also, on invitation, 
flocked to Paris to attend the nuptials. As 
Henry was a Protestant, the son of a de- 
votedly pious and ardently zealous Protest- 
ant mother, and Margaret was a papist, the 
event seemed significant of kindliest har- 
mony in Church and State. 

But underneath all this seeming bright- 
ness there lurked the profoundest treachery. 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 211 

The Huguenots had been lured to Paris to 
a marriage feast ; they found that the feast 
was preliminary to an awful slaughter. The 
idea of a general massacre of the Huguenots 
was anything but shocking to the papist 
mind of that day. Butcheries of the Wal- 
denses and Albigenses and butcheries in 
the Netherlands had rather whetted than 
cloyed the Romish appetite for the blood 
of heretics. Philip of Spain and the pope 
of Pome were always ready for it. Who 
should bear the infamy of having first sug- 
gested this particular massacre is hardly 
known. It is attributed by some to the 
grand-master of the Inquisition at Pome, 
red as he was all over with the blood of the 
saints. But as to the willing agents in the 
work there can be little doubt. At the 
head of the butchers stands the grim form 
of Catherine de Medici. Side by side with 
her was Henry duke of Guise. His father, 
Francis, had been slain in his camp before 
Orleans by Poltrot de Mere, a Protestant. 
Henry chose to consider Coligny as the 



212 PEESBYTEFJAXTSM. 

instigator of the murder, though both the 
character and solemn denial of Coligny 
removed all doubt from honest minds. But 
from this time " death to Coligny and the 
Huguenots" was the watchword of Henry 
of Guise. 

Another bitter foe was the widow of the 
slain duke of Guise, Anne, now the duchess 
of Xemours, who, from being a Protestant, 
had become a fierce Romish bigot. 

Another still was the king Charles IX., a 
man subject to fits of jmssion that bordered 
even on frenzy, and whom his mother knew 
well how to lash into fury. 

This king, however, was rather the tool 
than the originator of the plot. Often he 
shrank with horror from the suggestion. 
But he lived in mortal dread of his mother, 
so familiar with poison and so deeply 
suspected of having poisoned his brother. 
Bitterly reproaching him for his reluctance, 
Catherine said to him, with tears and tones 
which were ever at her command, " Why 
this ingratitude to your mother ? You hide 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 213 

yourself from me. You take counsel with 
my foes. You will make France a prey to 
the Huguenots. Either be guided by me 
or let me go back to my native country, that 
I may not witness such disgrace." The 
poor king was frightened, and begging his 
mother's pardon, promised obedience. 

Many events foreshadowed the coming 
horror. In the rue St. Denis stood a huge 
cross commemorating the execution of three 
men, " principally because they had there 
celebrated the Lord's Supper." For this 
crime their house had been pulled down, 
and on the spot this cross erected as a 
warning to heretics. By the treaty of 1570 
it was agreed that this memento of blood- 
shed should be removed. Its removal was 
ordered by the king, but the officer was 
deterred from obeying the order by fear 
of the mob. One dark night, however, the 
attempt was made. The attempt was dis- 
covered. The mob assembled. The cry 
" To arms!" was heard in the streets. There 
was a fierce riot, in which two houses were 



214 rBESBYTERIANISM. 

burned and a "sermoner" killed. At last 
the cross was removed to the cemetery of the 
Innocents. Another mob rushed through 
the streets, crying, " Kill the Huguenots !" 
Houses were pillaged and families were 
murdered. Such was the temper of the 
Parisian papists surrounding the Huguenots 
who had come to the marriage. 

Another token of the coming woe : 
Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, a 
warm, devout Huguenot, who had brought 
her son Henry to Paris to wed the daugh- 
ter of Catherine, died. It was said that 
poisoned perfumes had been sold her in a 
Parisian shop kept by "the queen's poi- 
soner." Her dying words to her son were, 
" I command you to persevere in the faith 
in which you have been reared. Keep no 
men in your service who have no fear of 
God, and whose lives are scandalous. Be- 
ware of wicked women." 

The report that the queen of Navarre 
had been poisoned spread like wildfire, and 
carried dismay into the bosoms of the Hu- 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 215 

guenot chiefs. Of the character of this 
queen even a Romanist could say, "Her 
heart overflowed with every virtue and qual- 
ity that ennobles and elevates mankind." 
It was the ninth of June, 1572. At the 
funeral Henry rode at the head of eight 
hundred noblemen clothed in black, accom- 
panied by troops of papists clad in scarlet. 

The wedding was postponed, and through 
the streets were heard the ominous mutter- 
ing, "See these accursed Huguenots, these 
outcasts of heaven, deniers of God, haters 
of the saints ! Sing us one of your whin- 
ing psalms!" Well does Blackburn say, 
" the Huguenots were walking on the sides 
of a volcano." Not a few of them, op- 
pressed with a sense of coming ill, quietly 
slipped away to their homes. 

The day for the wedding, the eighteenth 
of August, drew on. Coligny was at Cha- 
tillon, intending to be absent from the wed- 
ding. The king, however, begged him to 
come to Paris. As he mounted his horse a 
pious peasant-woman who had found Christ 



216 PBESB YTERIA N18M. 

in the admiral's bouse seized the stirrup, 
clasped his knee and with entreaties and 
tears said, " Ah, my good master, if you go 
to that wicked court we shall never see you 
again.'' Then throwing herself at the feet 
of the lady of Chatillon, she cried, " He will 
never return. He will occasion, too, the 
death of more than two thousand others." 

At last came the wedding-day. " Every 
spot of ground between the Louvre and 
the cathedral of Notre Dame was densely 
crowded. From every window and balcony 
the people gazed. King Charles, the Prince 
of Conde and Henry rode together, dressed 
alike as a sign of friendship. The men 
were in gorgeous apparel, the bride blazed 
in diamonds." 

To his wife, about to become a mother, 
Coligny wrote : " To-day the king's sister 
was married to the king of Navarre. The 
next three or four days will be spent in 
banquets, balls, masquerades and tourna- 
ments. I hope to leave the city within 
seven days." 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 217 

In the heart of Paris, on the northern 
bank of the Seine, stands that matchless 
architectural pile, the palace of the Louvre. 
Its eastern front, overlooking a broad street, 
is five hundred and thirty-eight feet in 
extent, and its sides on either hand reach 
westward five hundred and seventy-six feet. 
Across the street, opposite the eastern front, 
stands the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. 
Near this was the house of Coligny. Four 
days after the wedding, as the admiral was 
crossing the street between the Louvre and 
his own mansion, a shot was fired from a 
latticed window in the house adjoining the 
church, and two balls struck him, one tak- 
ing off the first finger of his right hand, the 
other entering deep into his arm. Reeling 
back, he exclaimed, " I am wounded !" The 
cry arose, "The admiral is shot!" Point- 
ing to the house, he said, " There is where 
it came from. Pun tell the king!" The 
admiral was borne to his mansion, and soon 
it rang through Paris, " Coligny is slain !" 
Some exulted, some were filled with anguish, 



2 1 S PBESB YTERIANISM. 

all looked with wonder to see what would 
follow. The crowd gathered, and some, dip- 
ping their fingers in the admiral's blood, 
called on God for justice. The Huguenot 
chiefs flew to Coligny's house, and one word 
from him would have unsheathed hundreds 
of blades to drink the blood of the Guises. 
This was what Catherine expected and de- 
sired. Let the Huguenots begin the work 
of death, and there will be good excuse for 
butchering them all. 

Poor, half-crazy King Charles was play- 
ing in the tennis court when the word came, 
" The admiral is killed !" He threw down 
his racket and fell into one of those frenzies 
of raving and cursing that would have done 
credit to a demon. 

Contrast the two scenes, separated only 
by the width of a street. In yon chamber 
lies the bleeding admiral, the surgeon hav- 
ing amputated his finger and cut the ball 
from his arm. " Nothing happens," he said, 
"but by the will of God. Why do you 
weep ? I am happy in being thus wounded in 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 219 

God's cause. Pray that he may strengthen 
me. I forgive with all my heart him who 
fired upon me and those who incited him. 
I suspect no one but the duke of Guise, and 
I am not even sure about him." 

In a room in the Louvre, Catherine is 
closeted with Anjou, her wicked younger 
son. Charles enters, grinding his teeth and 
forcing between them a low, hissing growl. 
There they are, three wicked, shuddering 
souls ! The door is flung open and the 
king of Navarre, Rochefoucauld and Conde 
enter. Conde holds up a blood-spotted 
hand and cries, " Justice !" " Whose blood 
is that ?" cried Charles ; " the admiral's ?" 
And Charles poured out a stream of blas- 
phemies fresh from the pit. " It shall be 
avenged," said Charles. " Guise is a vil- 
lain. I will take vengeance on him so ter- 
rible that the child unborn will rue it." 

The conspirators were at their wits' end. 
What to do next they did not know. There 
had been a blunder. An enormous crime 
had been perpetrated and nothing gained. 



220 riiXSB YTERIA NISM. 

The admiral was still alive, the Huguenots 
exasperated and the mad king was raving 
at the conspirators. 

Catherine and Anjou hid themselves in 
their closet, and the latter exclaimed, " Our 
noble enterprise has miscarried." It was 
Friday night, and all night long the lights 
gleamed in the Louvre, "as if the wicked 
who plotted against the just were afraid that 
God might come in the darkness." The 
question was how to kill the Huguenots. 

Saturday came, and still the question was 
undetermined. A conclave was held in a 
house without the walls. Anjou, De Retz, 
Biraque, Tavannes and Nevers were there 
with Catherine. " The king must be fright- 
ened into the scheme," said Catherine. In 
due time the conspirators reappear at the 
Louvre. 

The city that day was all in a tremble. 
There were muttered threats from the lips 
of half-armed soldiers, "low murmurs in 
dark alleys, the brag of street boys, prophe- 
cies of blatant women, quarrels at the mar- 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 221 

kets and chaos everywhere." The Hugue- 
nots kept within doors, or if they walked 
out they watched for the dagger. Tidings 
now reached the ears of the Huguenots of 
" much carrying of arms to and fro, of - 
pikes and lances secretly borne into the 
Louvre, rumbling of artillery wagons, forg- 
ing of weapons, burnishing of armor, post- 
ing of soldiers, galloping of couriers," and 
every sign of awful preparation. If the 
devil ever spoke by the lips of man, it was 
when Anjou advised that all Roman Catho- 
lics remove from the vicinity of the admiral's 
mansion that their places might be filled with 
the admiral's friends. Coligny thought it 
very kind of the king. He did not see that 
the sheep were thus penned up for slaughter. 
But the king must be gained. De Retz 
took him in hand. He said : " A great 
great danger threatens you. The admiral 
is a dangerous man. The effort to take his 
life was not made by Guise alone. Your 
mother and Anjou were with him. She saw 
how dangerous he was, and wished to rid the 



222 PRESB YTERL I NJDSM, 

kingdom of the pest. It has failed, and the 
Huguenots will take up arms this very 
night." Charles, of course, went into a 
furious rage. And then Catherine opened 
her " budget of lies." She said, " I have 
intercepted their letters. They have sent 
beyond the Khine for sixteen thousand 
men. They mean to place Henry of Na- 
varre on the throne." 

Charles doubted. A cold sweat stood on 
his brows. Catherine now asked, " Do you 
wish to be murdered ? The Catholics will 
stand by you. They wish to end these 
wars at a blow." The king still hesitating, 
Catharine stung him with the suggestion 
that he was a coward. Goaded almost 
to madness, he sprang to his feet, raving 
like a madman ; and bellowing forth his 
oaths, he exclaimed, " Hold your tongues ! 
If you must kill the admiral, then kill all 
the Huguenots — all ! all ! Don't leave one to 
reproach me with the deed. Kill them ! see 
to it at once. Do you hear ?" Then rushing 
away, he left the conspirators to themselves. 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 223 

They spent all that day and a good part of 
the night in arranging their plans. 

Guise was summoned, and his uncle Au- 
male. " The city was divided into four dis- 
tricts. The general military superintend- 
ence was given to Tavannes. Montpensier 
had charge of the Louvre, Guise the quar- 
ter of the admiral. The hour was fixed. 
The signal would be given by the great bell 
on the Palace of Justice. The badge pre- 
scribed for the Eomanists was a white badge 
on the arm and a white cross on the cap." 

Guise now went out and spread enor- 
mous lies among the people : " The Hugue- 
not chiefs were in revolt, and bringing in 
twenty-five thousand men to burn the city." 

'Tis Saturday night. At dawn of the 
day when the loving Jesus rose from the 
dead the work of butchery will begin. 
There remained with Coligny the royal 
physician, the chaplain pastor, Peter Mer- 
lin, Cornatou, Tolet, Le Bonne, five Swit- 
zers of Navarre's guard and a few servants. 
The last to leave him that night were his 



224 rRESBYTERIANISM. 

son-in-law, Teligny, and his faithful daugh- 
ter Louisa. All was quiet in the mansion 
of the admiral. 

Not so at the Louvre. After midnight 
Charles was pacing his room, shivering as 
one in an ague, the cold drops on his 
forehead, the agony in his heart. Cathe- 
rine and Anne, widow of the duke Francis 
of Guise, all the conspirators, were there. 
"It is too late to retreat," said Catherine 
to Charles. " God never gave a man so fine 
an opportunity. If you delay, you will lose 
it." The trembling royal wretch sprang 
forward, laid hold of his cloak, and said 
with all his madness, "Well, begin !" 

Guise withdrew. It was yet an hour and 
a half before the bell would ring. Cathe- 
rine and her wretched crew clung to each 
other in silent horror. The dread of a 
prodigious, ghastly crime crushed their 
spirits. 

It was not yet four o'clock. They could 
not wait. Catherine and her guilty crew 
on one side of the street, the wounded Co- 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 225 

ligny and his friends on the other, were 
startled by the tramp of cavalry and foot- 
men. There was a crash at Coligny's door, 
a rush up the stairs, and shots and shrieks. 
Coligny had been lifted out of bed, and was 
praying with Pastor Merlin. The door of 
the room was dashed open. 

"Are you the admiral ?" demanded the 
assassin. 

" I am," replied the old man. " But you, 
young man, should respect my gray hairs, 
and not attack a wounded man." 

A curse and a thrust of a sword to the 
hilt into the admiral's heart was the reply. 

The impatient, guilty Guise from the 
pavement below called out, "Behm, have 
you finished ?" 

" It is over," answered Behm. 

" Throw him down ;" and soon the body 
fell upon the pavement. A lantern was 
held near, and the blood was wiped from 
the face, when Guise said, 

"Yes, it is he. I know him well. Lie 
there, thou serpent !" and he gave the hardly 



-26 P&ESBYTER LA NJJSM. 

dead body a kick. Then the head was cut 
off and sent over to Catherine. 

" Well done, my men," said Guise ; " we 
have made a good beginning." 

And now that the "good beginning " had 
been made, the work must go on. The king 
may repent, and that bell on the Palace of 
Justice will not ring for three-quarters of 
an hour. " Go," said Catherine, " and ring 
the bell in the church of St. Germain 
l'Auxerrois ;" and the booming of that bell 
" unbarred the gates of hell." 

When the bell rang, the king and his 
mother were looking from the windows of 
the palace upon the balmy Sabbath morning. 
" The weather," said Charles to his mother, 
"is rejoicing over what we are about to do." 

At the signal the crowds rushed into the 
streets, and pistol shots and shouts and 
screams filled the air. The excitement of 
the moment filled the king with a frenzy, 
and grasping a gun, he fired into the crowd, 
crying, " Kill ! kill !" 

The soldiers had a list of the Huguenot 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 227 

houses and lodgings. They broke down the 
doors and slew and ravaged and pillaged. 
The dawn now came and showed them their 
victims. " If one shut the door in the face 
of a ruffian, or refused to inform on his 
neighbor, or begged for his life, or wore not 
the white badge, or would not join in the 
slaughter," he was a heretic and was killed. 
"Every rioter, every low villain, every 
malcontent, every menial greedy for plunder, 
every profligate, put on the white cross and 
became a volunteer. The populace became 
one vast mob ; while dukes and lords were 
killing at the Louvre, the bands of the sec- 
tions, men, women and even children, strove 
which should be first in the pious work. 
All Catholic Paris was at the business. 
Through street, lane, quay and causeway 
the air rang with yells and curses, pistol- 
shots and crashing windows; the roadways 
were strewed with mangled bodies ; the doors 
were blocked with the dead and the dying. 
From garden, closet, roof or stable crouch- 
ing creatures were torn and stabbed; boys 



228 PEE^B YTKRIANT8U 

practiced their hands at strangling babies 
in their cradles, and headless bodies -were 
trailed along the trottoir. Carts struggled 
through the crowd, carrying the dead in 
piles to the Seine.'' 

" Imagine a vast city in which sixty thou- 
sand men armed with pistols, stakes, cut- 
lasses, poignards, knives and other bloody 
weapons are running about on all sides, 
blaspheming and murdering all they meet. 
The pavements were covered with dead 
bodies, the doors, gates, entrances of pal- 
aces and private houses steeped in blood ; a 
horrible tempest of yells and murderous 
cries filled the air, mingled with the reports 
of firearms and the piteous shrieks of the 
slaughtered, the dead bodies falling from 
the windows, the court of the Louvre red 
with blood and the Seine running crimson V s 

There was a full week of rioting and 
murdering. To sanction and stimulate the 
work, Eome wrought a miracle at noon on 
that awful day. A hawthorn bush in the 
'• Cemetery of the Innocents,'' which had 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 229 

not bloomed for four years, now suddenly, 
out of season, by aid of a cunning friar, was 
covered with white blossoms. The king, 
court, council, clergy and all the rest of the 
murderous rabble went in procession to the 
cemetery to refresh their pure eyes with a 
sight of the miracle. 

"See," said they, "the white cross tri- 
umphs !" 

On their way the friars killed Huguenots 
and the monks cried out, " The Church re- 
vives by the death of heretics !" 

The king, now fully in the spirit of the 
revel, gave orders for conducting the massa- 
cre. Eight hundred Huguenots were torn 
from the places in which they had sought 
refuge, led to a spot on the banks of the 
Seine called the "Vale of Misery," where 
they were shot or made to walk the plank 
into the river. 

The headless body of Coligny was 
dragged about the streets, put over a fire 
and scorched, thrown into the river, taken 
out again, dragged about the street again, 



230 PEESB YTEPJA XISM. 

and then hung upon the gallows by the 
feet. His head, there is reason to believe, 
was sent to Borne to feast the eyes of the 
infallible. His castle was despoiled, the 
trees rooted up, the property confiscated, 
his family declared ignoble and all possible 
terrors heaped upon his children. His wife 
was at length seized, thrown into prison at 
Xice, persecuted and tormented for nearly 
twenty-seven years, until she was driven to 
madness and death. 

Nor was the tide of massacre restrained 
within the walls of Paris. It flowed in one 
wave of blood, fire and war over France. 
Almost every village had its festival of 
blood. Nor was its duration limited to a 
day or a week. " For two months this hor- 
rible tempest swept over France, being more 
or less bloody according to the temper of 
those in authority.'' At Bourges, Rouen, 
Nevers, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lyons, Or- 
leans, Treves, the slaughter was immense. 

The number of victims of this truly 
Romish exploit it is impossible to tell. " At 



THE CONFLICT IN FRANCE. 231 

Paris the number may have been six thou- 
sand, in France fifty thousand," though 
some say seventy thousand, and others one 
hundred thousand. 

The news of this piece of demonism filled 
the Protestant world with horror. The 
queen of England clothed herself in mourn- 
ing and spurned the apologies of the French 
envoy with contempt. Knox in Scotland 
said to the French ambassador, " Go tell 
your master that God's vengeance will never 
depart from him nor his house, that his 
name shall remain an execration to pos- 
terity, and that none proceeding from his 
loins shall enjoy the kingdom in peace ex- 
cept he repent." The prediction was more 
than fulfilled. But how was the story of 
this enormity received by Pome and Po- 
manism ? At Madrid there was unbounded 
joy. Philip even laughed — an astonishing 
phenomenon in his life. He " seemed more 
delighted than with all the good fortune 
or happy incidents which had ever before 
occurred to him." 



232 PRESBYTERIANIS3T. 

"In the Spanish camp before Mons the 
joy was unbounded. With anthems in St. 
Gudule, with bonfires, with festive illumi- 
nations, roaring artillery, with trumpets 
also and with shawms, was the glorious 
holiday celebrated in court and in camp." 
In Rome the bells rang, the bonfires blazed, 
the guns of St. Angelo thundered. The 
man who brought the precious tidings re- 
ceived a thousand crowns. The pope and 
cardinals marched in procession to the 
church of St. Louis, where Lorraine chanted 
the Te Deum. The pope sent to Charles IX. 
the golden rose. He had a medal struck, 
on one side of which was a destroying angel, 
the cross in one hand, a sword in the other, 
slaying heretics, and on the other a likeness 
of his Holiness, with the legend Hugonotto- 
rum Strages, 1572. He also had three fres- 
coes painted in the Vatican, one represent- 
ing the attack on the admiral, another the 
king in council plotting the deed and a 
third the massacre itself. 



V. 

CONCLUSION. 

PpHUS was it with Presbyterianism three 
hundred years ago, and well were it 
for us all were we more familiar with the 
thrilling, bleeding, glorious tale. Well 
were it for our Church could our youthful 
Presbyterians be induced to fill their minds 
with the records of those days that so sorely 
tried men's souls, with the true character 
and history of our glorious Presbyterian- 
ism, with the heroism to which it gave 
birth, the heroes that glorify its progress 
and the services it has rendered the world. 
More than once it saved the Eeformation in 
Britain, and once at least it saved free con- 
stitutional government from overthrow. 

How instructive, too, and in many re- 
spects how cheering, is the contrast between 
those days and ours! Over all the round 



234 PRESB TTERLAmSM. 

"world, almost, no hindrance to the free 
propagation of the unsearchable riches of 
Christ. 

''From Greenland's icy mountains, 

From India's coral strand, 
"Where Afric's sunny fountains 

Boll down their golden sand, 
From many an ancient river, 

From many a palmy plain, 
They call us to deliver 

Their land from Errors chain." 

An active response to this world-wide 
call is forbidden by no satanic Catherine de 
Medici, by no blood-seeking Alva, by no 
imperious self-willed Elizabeth. Through 
all the changes of three centuries but one 
sturdy opponent of the truth remains 
unchanged in spirit, though wondrously 
changed in power, and that is the Roman 
papacy. By the blasphemous decree of 
infallibility, which assures us that the pope, 
issuing his edicts ex cathedra upon the sub- 
jects of morals and religion, cannot err, all 
the past enormities of the papacy, its edicts 
of blood and woe, are solemnly appropriated 



CONCLUSION. 235 

to itself and sealed as the infallibly right- 
eous decrees of God. Not from innate 
bloodthirstiness, not from natural delight 
in persecution to butchery and flame, but 
simply as a duty to the truth, to the Church - 
and to God, would the Romish apostasy, 
had it the power to-day, repeat the bloody 
work in any and every land. But, thanks 
be to God ! the lion is gone into senility, 
his teeth are drawn and his claws are out, 
and hence there remains to him only the 
harmless privilege of bemoaning the palmy 
days of St. Bartholomew and wishing in 
vain for their return. 

Since those days Presbyterianism has 
passed through many sore trials, has in 
some countries sadly betrayed its trust, but, 
withal, it has won many a notable victory. 

On the subject of the present English- 
speaking Presbyterianism we quote the elo- 
quent Dr. Blakie of Edinburgh : 

"The career of English-speaking Pres- 
byterianism may be said to have commenced 
in 1560, when the first General Assembly 



236 PRESB YTER1ANISM. 

of the Church of Scotland met, under 
Knox, and numbered six ministers and 
thirty-four laymen. Three hundred years 
ago the English language was almost con- 
fined to England and the Scottish Low- 
lands, and the people who spoke it might 
fairly be estimated at five millions. That 
handful has increased to about seventy-five 
millions, and wherever the language has 
gone Presbyterianism has gone also. The 
six ministers of 1560 have as their succes- 
sors in Scotland alone three thousand 
ministers. In Ireland there are about six 
hundred ministers and congregations. In 
England there are at least two hundred 
and fifty. In the Dominion of Canada 
there are upward of five hundred ministers 
and churches of our order. In Australia, 
New Zealand, Africa, West Indies, etc. 
there are about five hundred more. All 
the Presbyterian churches in the United 
States put together number about seven 
thousand two hundred. The Presbyterian 
churches that look back to the assembly 



CONCLUSION. 237 

of Edinburgh, in 1560, as their mother 
assembly, number in all about twelve thou- 
sand ministers and churches, living in the 
British Isles, in the United States, in Brit- 
ish America, and in the isles of the south- 
ern seas. With the exception of the ten 
or twelve per cent, that constitute the Estab- 
lished Church in Scotland, the whole of 
this body owes its support to the freewill- 
offerings of the people, and therefore pos- 
sesses at least the kind and degree of life 
and activity necessary for continuing its 
own existence. No political revolution can 
greatly affect its strength or its welfare." 

May God add his blessing and imbue the 
Presbyterianism of the world with the or- 
thodox fidelity of the Waldenses, with the 
prayerful zeal of Knox, as on his knees in 
the enclosure behind his house in High 
street he prayed, " O God, give me Scotland, 
or I die !" and with the purity, dignity and 
nobility of character illustrated in Admiral 
Coligny, and with the generous, tolerant 
spirit of William the Silent ! Amen ! 




Jiiii . 



